It’s a question that has bewildered Americans again and again in the wake of 9/11, in reference to the Arab and Muslim worlds. These days, however, it’s a question increasingly asked about the reclusive North Koreans.

Let’s be clear: There is no doubt that the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea both fear and loathe the United States. Paranoia, resentment, and a crude anti-Americanism have been nurtured inside the Hermit Kingdom for decades. Children are taught to hate Americans in school while adults mark a “Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Month” every year (it’s in June, in case you were wondering).

North Korean officials make wild threats against the United States while the regime, led by the brutal and sadistic Kim Jong-un, pumps out fake news in the form of self-serving propaganda, on an industrial scale. In the DPRK, anti-American hatred is a commodity never in short supply.

“The hate, though,” as longtime North Korea watcher Blaine Harden observed in the Washington Post, “is not all manufactured.” Some of it, he wrote, “is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.”

Forgets as in the “forgotten war.” Yes, the Korean War. Remember that? The one wedged between World War II and the Vietnam War? The first “hot” war of the Cold War, which took place between 1950 and 1953, and which has since been conveniently airbrushed from most discussions and debates about the “crazy” and “insane” regime in Pyongyang? Forgotten despite the fact that this particular war isn’t even over — it was halted by an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty — and despite the fact that the conflict saw the United States engage in numerouswar crimes, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, continue to shape the way North Koreans view the United States, even if the residents of the United States remain blissfully ignorant of their country’s belligerent past.

For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nevertheless, “What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,” “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”

How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?

How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”?

Twenty. Percent. For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population. According to LeMay, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.”

Every. Town. More than 3 million civilians are believed to have been killed in the fighting, the vast majority of them in the north.

An elderly woman and her grandchild wander among the debris of their wrecked home in the aftermath of an air raid by U.S. planes over Pyongyang, the Communist capital of North Korea, circa 1950.

Photo: Keystone/Getty Images

How many Americans are familiar with the statements of Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas? Rusk, who was a State Department official in charge of Far Eastern affairs during the Korean War, would later admit that the United States bombed “every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.” American pilots, he noted, “were just bombing the heck out of North Korea.”

Douglas visited Korea in the summer of 1952 and was stunned by the “misery, disease, pain and suffering, starvation” that had been “compounded” by air strikes. U.S. warplanes, having run out of military targets, had bombed farms, dams, factories, and hospitals. “I had seen the war-battered cities of Europe,” the Supreme Court justice confessed, “but I had not seen devastation until I had seen Korea.”

How many Americans have ever come across Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s unhinged plan to win the war against North Korea in just 10 days? MacArthur, who led the United Nations Command during the conflict, wanted to drop “between 30 and 50 atomic bombs … strung across the neck of Manchuria” that would have “spread behind us … a belt of radioactive cobalt.”

How many Americans have heard of the No Gun Ri massacre, in July 1950, in which hundreds of Koreans were killed by U.S. warplanes and members of the 7th U.S. Cavalry regiment as they huddled under a bridge? Details of the massacre emerged in 1999, when the Associated Press interviewed dozens of retired U.S. military personnel. “The hell with all those people,” one American veteran recalled his captain as saying. “Let’s get rid of all of them.”

How many Americans are taught in school about the Bodo League massacre of tens of thousands of suspected communists on the orders of the U.S.-backed South Korean strongman, President Syngman Rhee, in the summer of 1950? Eyewitness accounts suggest “jeeploads” of U.S. military officers were present and “supervised the butchery.”

Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.

For the residents of the DPRK, writes Columbia University historian Charles Armstrong in his book “Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992,” “the American air war left a deep and lasting impression” and “more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats, that would continue long after the war’s end.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not pretending that Kim’s violent and totalitarian regime would be any less violent or totalitarian today had the U.S. not carpet-bombed North Korea almost 70 years ago. Nor am I expecting Donald Trump, of all presidents, to offer a formal apology to Pyongyang on behalf of the U.S. government for the U.S. war crimes of 1950 through 1953.

If another Korean war, a potentially nuclear war, is to be avoided and if, as the Czech-born novelist Milan Kundera famously wrote, “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” then ordinary Americans can no longer afford to forget the death, destruction, and debilitating legacy of the original Korean War.

Top photo: U.S. troops bring in North Korean prisoners of war, Oct. 7, 1950.

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That pussy Truman didn’t let MacArthur finish the job. The Russians gave them the technology, they only answer to the Chinese. The time for a nuclear “accident” on the northern end of the peninsula is overdue. Gaddafi gave up on nukes, we see what that got him.

On behalf of all Americans, I would like to apologize for invading a country and splitting it in half. It’s our fault, we should apologize to the North Koreans. Let’s start an apology tour across the world and apologize for grevious errors in judgement. We should never be the worlds policeman! Let’s let someone else do it. Those times when the nice Koreans slaughtered our men and women should be discounted because it’s our fault we were there. Oh my, the horrors of war and the causalties that occur.
Tripoli, Cuba, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the list goes on. America should just lie down and be the dove.

It is not our apology to give. We saved half of that country (geographically) from misery. If we had not intervened, the Soviet armies would have swallowed the entire Peninsula. Most Koreans are in the South and they are free. They should be thanking us.

But then Americans (US citizens) are easily “bewildered”… “The American air war left a deep and lasting impression?” Gee, do you think, Mr Hasan? “Impression?” I know you’re quoting Armstrong here, but do you really think “Kim’s violent and totalitarian regime” is any more brutal than our soon to be fully fledged police state or consistently murderous empire with its black sites, Guantanamos and Kandahars? It’s record of completely destroyed countries and cultures? Perspective, my friend. (And that’s not an apology for anyone else’s authoritarianism. Least of all our own.)

I see nothing about the horrors visited upon the South Korean people at the beginning of the war. Living in Korea for the past 2 years, I have met many old timers and heard their experiences. Seoul changed hands 3 times. The barbarism of North Korean soldiers was, in fact, worse than the Nazi armies in Europe. Even so many South koreans long for their country to be reunited. Unlike the brainwashed masses in the North. I am in no way condoning any acts of war by any country, or peoples. War is Evil….
In the same way people misunderstand the issues of the Middle East. I respectfully suggest that you live in the country you are writing about so you can truly understand what your words convey.

Nothing you said about South Korean dictators weakened Lee’s point. North Koreans committed severe atrocities against South Koreans during the war. The difference is that South Korea has admitted atrocities their governments and allies committed in the North and the South.
Has North Korea admitted committing any war crimes since starting the war in 1950?

Official history books in South Korea make very little mention of atrocities committed by South Korean dictators, and practically NO mention of the atrocities on Jeju Island. And they were totally silent about any of this up until the late 1990’s. They sugar coat their history just as much as any other country does, including the US and Japan.

The genocidal-terrorism habit of American foreign policy was visible in the Great Plains Indian wars of the 19th century. Kit Carson and General Sherman developed the techniques for the Army of destroying Indian camps behind the lines, including women and children inhabitants.

Any moral outrages that arise after the start of any war about genocide, carpet bombing, civilian deaths, holocausts, rape, abortion, MOABs etc., are just ignorant and thoughtless nonsense.
All of these horrors are merely subsets of war. War is the very thing you all think is so necessary when you say “I support the troops”. Because like it or not, that is what military governments do from privates to presidents, they kill. And they kill very indiscriminately. Given these facts, attempts at moralizing after accepting war itself is just muddled thinking.
You need to decide for yourself if war is ever necessary. If you do cross that critical line and say yes, you must accept these horrors as strictly academic statistics and never moral dilemmas in themselves. You can lessen the damage, but a morality play it is not. The futile micro-analyisis in search of morality you see in Mr. Hasan’s article and these posts will never change that fact.

This is not the first time I’ve objected to the overdramatized and inaccurate articles with their muddled thinking of Mr. Hasan. He’s quickly relegating himself to click-bait.
Maybe that’s been his goal all along.

You sound exactly like a psychopath trying to justify his crimes and atrocities in order to evade punishment. Psychos don’t get the notions of crimes against humanity or genocide or war atrocity; they do however react against all attempts to pare down their malignant narcissism. May you rot in Hell.

Sounds like a little dog picked a fight with a big dog and now huddles in fear barking at anything that moves due to the trauma from it happening.

That said I think the world could become a much better place if the USA owns up to a lot of its past mistakes and starts trying to right those wrongs instead of continuing to try to be right. Not just the US but most colonial powers as well, France, England, the Dutch etc. Most modern problems can be traced back to colonialism and the atrocities committed toward maintaining it.

Thank you—THANK YOU for this accurate ‘Historical’ perspective on the topic of North Korea! Much historical truth is conveniently swept under the carpet, so that the madness of future aggressions can continue—that there is an absolute certainty that those who ?forget? history are condemned to repeat it!

If you had ever been to North Korea, you would understand that the people there–the ones I encountered–do NOT hate America or Americans. They hate our government which threatens them constantly as has been sanctioning them and making their lives hell for 70 years. I have been there twice, and never been shown any animosity or hatred in any of my dealings with local people. I’ve even had frank discussions, shared beers with, and sang karaoke with North Koreans who have been kind, jovial and very friendly. They ARE real people, you know, with brains and with the ability to think for themselves. They know far more about the outside world than we think they do. They know that South Koreans are far more materially well off than they are, and guess what? They don’t all want to go to South Korea to live–they just want better lives for themselves. How about we engage the North Korean government, live up to our promises (the ones in the Agreed Framework of 1994, for example) and try to help them come into the 21st century, but on their terms instead of ours?

Another stupid article. By this logic, the US should be hated by the Japanese, the inhabitants of multiple countries in Polynesia, the Philippines, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Malta, Romania, Austria and Hungary; perhaps I’ve left a few out. No. The reason why North Koreans hate us is because it is useful to their government that they do. It was not the US that started the war, and the US was part of an international force under the auspices of the UN.

Few causes have absolutely predictable effects, and similar causes may have different effects.

Combine hatred from the effect of bombing the civilian population with the propaganda of the totalitarian government to fan that hatred and you arrive at the result.

Telling NK civilians who lost whole families in the war that the United States didn’t start it is not going to magically win their forgiveness — especially when their government doesn’t let them learn that truth.

Yes, you left many out, and the US and its warfare, foreign policy is indeed the reason why many, many countries hate the US, including the ones in South America. Go find some good history books and you will understand why.

Well, I have news for you: all those countries’ citizens you list despise Americans: for their stupidity, greed, lack of morality, lack of integrity, lack of education, lack of imagination, you name it. The fact that you are not aware of it shows that you do not understand the reality American “values” is having on the rest of the world, and especially those countries you mentioned.

I don’t agree with everything in the article, but I’m pretty sure you fail to appreciate the reality that we ARE hated around the globe. Or feared, or ridiculed, or loathed, or simply put up with. Travel much?

the communist were far more selective with their killing. they killed all city or village officials and any
civilian who wore glasses and any person they could trick into reading. that’s the way to get the type
of citizens who will support communism.

You do realize, don’t you, that many “governing committees” with socialist or communist ideas had been set up in South Korea during the Japanese occupation, and the US forces helped root them out and exterminate them. The South Korean governments, backed by the US military, killed and jailed thousands of those who “leaned left”–30,000 at least on Jeju Island. We promised the Koreans that the division of their country would only be for a “short time”–but when we realized that Kim Il-sung would be the huge faorite to head the government, we changed the rules. North Korea is a ruthless, totalitarian government in part because of the division of the country that we initiated. The Korean war was a civil war that was bound to happen–the only question was which side would be the first to invade. Syngman Rhee wanted to invade the north just as much as Kim Il-sung wanted to invade the south, and, when Kim did invade, it caused Dean Acheson, Secretary of State to exclaim “Thank God for Korea.” This was the US’s opportunity to test its new Cold War doctrine of antagonism toward the Soviet Union. Interesting, isn’t it, that the Soviet Union did not send any military forces into Korea to help the North Koreans in their civil war. The Chinese entered after MacArthur abrogated the UN charter and crossed into North Korean territory. He wanted to engage the Chinese, and just have it out right then and there. We were in violation of our own UN mandate. But that doesn’t matter when it’s the US of A–after all, God is on our side.

Hear fecking hear! I am a big fan of SK media and have viewed countless SK war/spy films and dramas that portray that period in history. Even though they were produced by South Koreans, there is definitely a feeling of pathos and no action or perspective that is celebrated in your face (unlike similar US films). Too many South Koreans still have blood relatives that live above the 38th parallel and its effects still resonate. We need to butt the heck out of foreign cultures and conflicts as clearly demonstrated by all of the subsequent conflicts that we have clearly lost since then. On the other hand, the US weapons of mass destruction industry has prospered.

Where does the idea come from which holds that all war is identical to all other war, as if it were an undifferentiated commodity, such that wars differ from one another only in how many crates or stacks of “war” accrue to them?

When a country attacks another, it chooses to either target only armed forces and military industry, or to perform several grades of cruel acts upon the population up to and including destroying every last house and farm and chicken. It is these choices that make one war different from another.

I don’t condone war on either side, but if the S.Korean soldiers truly were disguised as civilians (ie. women, children) then they have only themselves to blame. COWARDS disguise as civilians. We have no possibility however, of knowing the true events concerning the No Gun Ri massacre.

We only know what media and government employees tell us, both very untrustworthy sources of information.

Don’t pretend you know what you’re talking about. War isn’t about bravery, it’s about winning.

In actual conflict if you reject a known advantageous tactic, that puts you at a measurable disadvantage, which sets you on the path of losing. My advice: don’t quit your job to become a military commander.

That war was lost by the U.S. thanks to Truman firing Gen. McArthur. Viet Nam was a no win war, as was Iraq, Somalia (’93) and the long drawn out war in Afgan. The rest of the world sees us as losers and stupid idiots now for decades. The military now is only to keep people employed and off the streets, it is a modern 21st century WPA.

Politicians or generals are only called the ‘smartest and brightest’ by other ‘so-called smartest and brightest’. Their so called ‘intelligence’ is an illusion.

The MSM repeats what the ‘smartest and brightest’ tell them to say, and soon they think themselves to be the ‘smartest and brightest’.
Their paycheck is given only when they obey the so called ‘smartest and brightest’.
One look at the MSM is enough to understand that there is no ‘smart and bright’ to be had.

All the amateur historians here seem to forget one thing. The point is not about causes or who started the Korean “conflict” (great euphemism). The point is the incredible damage to innocent civilians etc., the US caused in North Korea. Similar in some respects to the Vietnam experience. That’s what North Koreans remember!

I’m just one person, but I think this comment is bizarre. Why is determining the source of the aggression “not the point”, since it follows that aggression leads to “incredible damage to innocent civilians”? That’s kind of what war does.

I neither understand nor support the desire to shrug one’s shoulders at understanding historical developments or their material causes. I don’t see what good that would do.

Yes. Once a war begins, none of its participants have any choice in what they do. Everything that happens afterward is just an inevitable result of the precipitating incident.
For example, if you run over my cat, and I come to your house and kill you with your family, this is all your fault. I had nothing to do with it, and it doesn’t matter, and we should not remember or pay any attention to the way I slaughtered your family, one by one.
Right?

“If you run over my cat, and I come to your house and kill you with your family, this is all your fault. I had nothing to do with it, and it doesn’t matter, and we should not remember or pay any attention to the way I slaughtered your family, one by one. Right?”

No.

If you run INTENTIONALLY over Al Capone’s cat, knowing very well how dangerous and blood thirsty he is, then he comes over your house and kill you and your family. This is all your fault. Al Capone would go to jail for murder, but you are responsible for putting your family in danger. Are you saying a father of six who gets into the drug trade with the Colombian cartel is not responsible for the murder for his children by cartel members he did not pay?

Um, it’s been a long day and right now I don’t have the mental energy to figure out what the hell you’re trying to get at with your response.

But contrary to what Hasan has written, his own source Dr. Cumings makes it clear that the war began before the North ever invaded the South.

“As to who did in reality fire that shot, Bruce Cumings, head of the history department at the University of Chicago, gave us the definitive answer in his two-volume The Origins of the Korean War, and The Korean War: A History: the Korean war started during the American occupation of the South, and it was Rhee, with help from his American sponsors, who initiated a series of attacks that well preceded the North Korean offensive of 1950. From 1945-1948, American forces aided Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do – where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee’s US-backed forces.”

Blaming the North is common historical revisionism. My issue with Lewis’ comment relates to that, because if there is an effort to forget or deem as unimportant the origins of the Korean War then the US’s imperial provocations and counterinsurgency machinations will also be forgotten or deemed unimportant. Since in Lewis’ comment he didn’t make it clear which “amateur historians” he was snarkily referring to, I thought pointing this out was warranted.

But once again, TI has its readers asking the wrong damn questions and arguing over the wrong damn things. *sighs*

The U.S. continues to wage war against the rest of the world. The government, controlled by certain special interests, has been waging an illegal and unconstitutional war against all peoples of the middle east based on lies, deceit and propaganda just as it did regarding the useless murderous war in Viet Nam. Just as it has in nearly ever Latin America nation. America is a ruthless, immoral unjust nation that has murdered millions around the world for the benefit of the few: the banking mafia, the military industrial complex and for those who are simply, psychopaths.
America continues to this very day to wage war in Africa, in Iraq and Syria destroying the lives of millions for israel. It continues its dirty work in Afghanistan, where, thanks to the U.S. government 95% of the world’s heroin now comes from that country. Poppies raised by the Northern Alliance leaders, most of whom Washington and the CIA have placed in power who are corrupt beyond imagination are destroying the lives of millions around the world. The crop is grown with the aid of the U.S and IMF. U.S. Marines are used to guard the fields and ferry the narco bosses around. Every single U.S. military officer serving in Afghanistan is corrupt and on the take. Heroin is shipped out of the region through Camp Bondsteel in Kazakistan on C-130s.
Washington is now the world’s largest drug dealer, along with the CIA , the military and politicians who are also getting their share, have swamped the planet with heroin causing more than 10,000 deaths in America alone.
This is the price of U.S. aggression. It includes a debt that is going to destroy the nation.
America is financially and morally bankrupt.
With $20 trillion in debts and rising, with Trump promising even more military spending and more wars, an administration filled with deviants and ignorant knee jerk hill billies, the threat of global nuclear war is closer than ever before. A nation that is morally bereft, yet, it claims to be a Christian nation, commits mass murder on a scale never before seen. Raping and plundering one nation after another in the name of greed.
It’s people largely illiterate and kept ignorant by government run public schools and through the corporat owned main stream media know very little, if at all about who actually runs America and why. Nor do they know the reasons why Washington continues to murder innocent men, women and children, destroy their towns and cities and turn entire regions into chaos and misery. America is good at this. This is what it does. It has gotten away with it for so long that it now believes its own lies, that it is the world’s policeman; unfortunately there are too many cops who are corrupt, power drunk psychopaths willing to use their power and authority to get away with anything.
sooner or later the price for all this must be paid. The financial collapse is just over the horizon. Worse than 2008, it will touch nearly every American and sooner or later some other nation will take advantage of America’s fall.
Good luck. be prepared and stay safe

It is still 1950 in North Korea, because the war (sorry, police action) has never ended. The countries involved, including the relevant UN actor countries, are still observing an armistice. North Korea was cut off and embargoed so that they would be defeated economically. End the war and enter into negotiations for peace, as should have happened decades ago.

The United States left the Japanese army in tact in the Korean Peninsula after World War II because we didn’t want to Garrison troops to do that tour they hated us for it and if the truth were told they were probably only fighting to get rid of the Japanese but I don’t blame them it was like rule the world on a shoestring budget for the US after WWII and in this instance it failed

My take on the Korean war is that we the (UN) absolutely did defeat the DPRK in the field and then China came in and they are the only reason the modern border exists as it does. So in many ways even the name Korean war is misleading.
We fought the China war on the Korean peninsula. It’s never taught that way in the USA but China was and still is the key to the whole situation. It was politically expedient to the old chinese communist regime to have North Korea on its border as a buffer state. Nowadays with China’s economic shift North Korea’s becoming more and more of a headache for them. But fundamentally nothing has changed NK is still a useful pawn in China’s chess match with the west. Meanwhile we threaten to restart a ground war on that peninsula and for nothing, with no gain to anyone. And the worst part is none of the mations involved have even framed the the truth to their people. What was done in the 50s what has continually occurred between North and South Korea since then or what the potential destruction of South Korea, North Korea, and Japan would mean for global stability. Namely that it would probably end global stability. North Korea may represent the ultimate test for our current civilization to be able to sheathe it’s weapons.

Otherwise Truman’s original dispute with MacArthur still stands true today a war on that peninsula could lead to a global war very quickly. This reminds me a bit of Waco Texas on an international scale. We must think two or three moves ahead before we resume a shooting war. Let the pride hubris and ego of the nations simmer down a bit before we move forward. Even best case scenario a war with North Korea would be bloody they’ve been fortifying for 70 years.

In reality an unhinged nation-state like North Korea is at least predictable and easier to deal with than what may come after if we invaded them. Let the people of NK tear down that regime if that is possible. Then there can be no long lasting blame to place on the west. It would be their own destiny in their own hands.

«We fought the China war on the Korean peninsula. It’s never taught that way in the USA but China was and still is the key to the whole situation.» In one way, «Tyson», you are quite correct ; ever since Hideyoshi’s day, more than four centuries ago, «Korea» has been a noa word for China for would-be conquerors of the latter. The US war on Korea – ostensibly in defence of its Lee Seung Man puppet regime in the south – was an attempt on the part of the US government to reverse the outcome of the Chinese civil war, which had left the People’s Republic in control of the mainland, and the US protégés, the Nationalists, cowering in Taiwan and waiting for the inevitable cross-straits invasion. When Mr Truman (who nota bene, had earlier advocated using nuclear weapons in the conflict) became convinced that such use would have dire consequences, not least in Europe, and for that reason rejected doing so, even if it meant the objectives for which the war had been fought could not be achieved, while McArthur refused to accept this view, the latter was fired….

Ever since the signing of the Armistice Agreement of 27 July 1953 by the Korean Senior Delegate Nam Il and the US Senior Delegate William Kelly Harrison Jr , the North Koreans have been pushing for the two states to enter into serious negotiations to replace the armistice with a treaty of peace, cf Article IV of the Agreement. If anyone still remembers the Geneva Conference of 26 April – 20 July1954, it was originally called to, as stipulated in the Agreement, bring about «a peaceful settlement of the Korean question», but failed, due to US intransigence (just as the latter part of the Conference, which dealt with Vietnam, also failed, for the same reason)….

More than six decades after the signing of the Armistice Agreement, US troops remain in South Korea, just as they do in Japan, more than seven decades after the Japanese surrender in WW II. As the real reason for these deployments – to maintain military pressure on China – cannot be mentioned, another justification has to be created, i e, the dastardly regime in North Korea, which ostensibly threatens all its peace-loving neighbours. For this reason, the US cannot allow tensions on the peninsula to ameliorate, choosing instead to keep them close to the boiling point with massive military manoeuvres and the flying of B-52s and B-1s along the border between the two Korean states….

But then, of course, it’s all the fault of that nasty Kim Jong-un and his «violent and totalitarian regime»….

Perhaps the author should ask soldiers that actually served in the Korean War. The trouble is that they are dying rapidly. My father served, I was born while he was in Korea. He came back but over the years he rarely spoke of his time in Korea. Only that it was cold and the Chinese were always probing the front lines to capture or kill American soldiers. My father served proudly but I can tell you that he did not put the Noth Koreans or Chinese on a pedastal.

This seems to be really hard to understand. The North invaded the South with the approval of the Soviets. It was the choice of North Korea to invade. No one forced them to initiate the conflict. They did feel it necessary to get the approval of the Soviets before invading however. That is something you just spend a little effort coming to grips with, OK?

You seem to ignore the role of the Soviets in Korea by design. Korea was occupied by Japan during WWII (beginning in 1910). When the US defeated the Japanese in WWII, the Koreans were liberated. The US and USSR split the country at the 38th parallel into spheres of influence. It was across this line that the North invaded with the blessing of the Soviet Union. The Korean War was more complicated by outside actors than the US civil war. However, I am certain that George Washington would have welcomed Korean help in 1861.

Shifting the blame, craig, even when directly involved with what amounts to genocide, has been a defining trat of American since its founding. This current untold story about it’s war of annihilation in Korea is just another example of it.

The point here is it is more than 67 years past that hostility. I don’t know enough about the subject, but, would like offer my perspective on the issue.
1- ok the North and the USSR are bad, and they STARTED the violence against the South Koreans. How is that compared to today bombing of Syria by Trump, or W. Bush bombing of Iraq, or the Saudis bombing of Yemen. Would you have enough morality / integrity to judge all foreign violence against sovereign nations as a crime.
2- if you are correct about N. Korea “started”, do you response by destroying the whole country?
3- after the whole criminal act of the US devastated the NKorea, why they did not have a peace treaty? Why they objected to the SKorean proposal to reunite the two nations 20 years ago?
4- regarding the evil dictator of NKorea? He has a 24 million population that is totally sanctioned and closed up to the outside world, yet he managed to build a great / advanced military, and the pictures coming out of their capital shows a great skyscrapers and clean streets, compare that with Egypt, which has twice as many population, and billions of foreign aids –I think that crazy dictator is better than all the Egyptian dictators combined Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Mursi, Sisi.

“if you are correct about N. Korea “started”, do you response by destroying the whole country?”

War crimes are exactly what they are: CRIMES. It does not matter whether they are committed by the US, North Korea, Sweden, Russia….

“after the whole criminal act of the US devastated the NKorea, why they did not have a peace treaty?”

Neither the North nor the South wanted a peace treaty. South Korea wanted unification by force and North Korea wanted the same. Russia/China and the US pushed both side into agreeing to at least a cessation of hostilities.

“the pictures coming out of their capital shows a great skyscrapers and clean streets,”

North Korea shows you the pictures they want you to see. I can go to Egypt freely and see how bad the dictators are. North Korean dictators do not allow people to leave the country freely and tell you what is going on.

The US and the USSR did not split the country. The United States split the country in two. It was solely the work of Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, who were put to the task by a US government terrified that Russia would overtake all of Korea. The die had already been cast for Korea, they would not be allowed by the allied forces to rule themselves, they “weren’t ready.” The seeds of the Korean war can be found in the US decision to renege on their treaty of 1882 with Korea and allow the Japanese to colonize Korea in 1905, with the Taft-Katsura Agreement. Because the US wanted “approval” to do as we desired in the recently “liberated” Philippine Islands, we received said approval from Japan, on the promise that we would allow them to colonize Korea. It was a horrible betrayal once again by a country that claimed “all men are created equal.” The subsequent brutal and soul-crushing colonization by Japan of the Korean peninsula sowed the seeds of rebellion and resistance in Korea. People either fought the Japanese intrusion, or they collaborated and made the best of a difficult situation. Men such as Kim Il-sung chose to fight the Japanese. Men like Syngman Rhee, the first dictator of South Korea fled the country for the comfort of a Princeton education in the US. Men like Park Chung-hee, the second dictator of South Korea actually joined the Japanese army in Manchuria, and fought the Korean freedom-fighters. The United States was actually quite surprised that Stalin did not object to the division of Korea, but Russia did not divide the peninsula, that was the brainchild of the US. And they “promised” that it would be for only a short period of time. Koreans should have studied the history of US treaty promises, especially with the indigenous peoples of North America. The resulting war was begun by Kim Il-sung with the blessing of Stalin, and had the civil war remained among Koreans only, he would undoubtedly have won. And that was without any help from China or Russia. The facts are, however, that South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee wanted to invade the north just as much as Kim Il-sung wanted to invade the south. There were many border skirmishes in the years leading up to the war. And Koreans saw this as a civil war to unite the peninsula as one country, free from foreign entanglements from Japan, China, Russia OR the US. Even today, when you talk to South Koreans or North Koreans (and yes, I have done that) at the heart of everything they want to be one country free from the influence of the “great” powers.

“The US and the USSR did not split the country. The United States split the country in two.”

FALSE. You are lying. The United States proposed two OCCUPATION ZONES to the Soviets. The Soviets accepted it.

“The resulting war was begun by Kim Il-sung with the blessing of Stalin, and had the civil war remained among Koreans only, he would undoubtedly have won. And that was without any help from China or Russia”

FALSE. You are lying again. North Korea received military equipment and training from China and Russia to invade the South. Where did those tanks come from?

And where were the Russian soldiers? Why did they not come to the aid of the North Koreans? The South Korean government had just as much, if not more, aid from the US, followed by thousands of troops. There is no re-writing of history.

“At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War in two to three months after victory in Europe. On August 8, 1945, three months to the day after the end of hostilities in Europe, and two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Soviet troops advanced rapidly, and the US government became anxious that they would occupy the whole of Korea. On August 10, 1945 two young officers – Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel – were assigned to define an American occupation zone. Working on extremely short notice and completely unprepared, they used a National Geographic map to decide on the 38th parallel. They chose it because it divided the country approximately in half but would place the capital Seoul under American control. No experts on Korea were consulted. The two men were unaware that forty years before, Japan and pre-revolutionary Russia had discussed sharing Korea along the same parallel. Rusk later said that had he known, he “almost surely” would have chosen a different line. The division placed sixteen million Koreans in the American zone and nine million in the Soviet zone. To the surprise of the Americans, the Soviet Union immediately accepted the division. The agreement was incorporated into General Order No. 1 (approved on 17 August 1945) for the surrender of Japan.” from Wikipedia

“……..The US and the USSR did not split the country. The United States split the country in two. It was solely the work of Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, who were put to the task by a US government terrified that Russia would overtake all of Korea……”

That should have terrified the Koreans. There would be no elections or democracy in Korea if the USSR had its way – even today (as you can see with North Korea). How many more people would have starved or died in gulags? How many South Koreans would have been killed in the take over?

The early history is a little more complex than you make it. Japan defeated Russia (Russia-Japanese War) and then the US agreed to allow Korea to be a protectorate of Japan – for reasons of stability. There was no official treaty.
Blaming the US is so typical. Should the US have gone to war over Korea in 1905?

“……Koreans should have studied the history of US treaty promises, especially with the indigenous peoples of North America……”

The Koreans should have studied the Gulags and starvation policies under Stalin which selectively affected ethnic Ukrainians pushing many to join Nazi Germany in WWII. They should have also studied the USSR and the countries dominated by Russia in the Soviet Empire. The South Koreans were just flat out lucky that the US (UN) came to the rescue. One to three million North Koreans perished after the Korean War due to economic policies, Soviet style gulags, political detention, torture and murder. I wonder how many more would have died. South Korea is a world economic power while North Koreans languish in poverty.

Thanks, but your version of the Korean history seems a little tainted…..

Thanks, but I’ll go with historian Bruce Cumings over Craig Summers and Swiss Cheese when it comes to historical facts.

“In the West, treatment of North Korea is one-sided and ahistorical. No one even gets the names straight. During Abe’s Florida visit, Trump referred to him as ‘Prime Minister Shinzo’. On 29 April, Ana Navarro, a prominent commentator on CNN, said: ‘Little boy Un is a maniac.’ The demonisation of North Korea transcends party lines, drawing on a host of subliminal racist and Orientalist imagery; no one is willing to accept that North Koreans may have valid reasons for not accepting the American definition of reality. Their rejection of the American worldview – generally perceived as indifference, even insolence in the face of overwhelming US power – makes North Korea appear irrational, impossible to control, and therefore fundamentally dangerous.

But if American commentators and politicians are ignorant of Korea’s history, they ought at least to be aware of their own. US involvement in Korea began towards the end of the Second World War, when State Department planners feared that Soviet soldiers, who were entering the northern part of the peninsula, would bring with them as many as thirty thousand Korean guerrillas who had been fighting the Japanese in north-east China. They began to consider a full military occupation that would assure America had the strongest voice in postwar Korean affairs. It might be a short occupation or, as a briefing paper put it, it might be one of ‘considerable duration’; the main point was that no other power should have a role in Korea such that ‘the proportionate strength of the US’ would be reduced to ‘a point where its effectiveness would be weakened’. Congress and the American people knew nothing about this. Several of the planners were Japanophiles who had never challenged Japan’s colonial claims in Korea and now hoped to reconstruct a peaceable and amenable postwar Japan. They worried that a Soviet occupation of Korea would thwart that goal and harm the postwar security of the Pacific. Following this logic, on the day after Nagasaki was obliterated, John J. McCloy of the War Department asked Dean Rusk and a colleague to go into a spare office and think about how to divide Korea. They chose the 38th parallel, and three weeks later 25,000 American combat troops entered southern Korea to establish a military government.

It lasted three years. To shore up their occupation, the Americans employed every last hireling of the Japanese they could find, including former officers in the Japanese military like Park Chung Hee and Kim Chae-gyu, both of whom graduated from the American military academy in Seoul in 1946. (After a military takeover in 1961 Park became president of South Korea, lasting a decade and a half until his ex-classmate Kim, by then head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, shot him dead over dinner one night.) After the Americans left in 1948 the border area around the 38th parallel was under the command of Kim Sok-won, another ex-officer of the Imperial Army, and it was no surprise that after a series of South Korean incursions into the North, full-scale civil war broke out on 25 June 1950.”

And one other point. It should be remembered as historical fact that the UN “mandate” for the Korean war forbade the UN forces from prosecuting the war above the 38th parallel. Their objective was to drive the North Korean forces out of the south, that was it. MacArthur went into North Korea on his own initiative, because he WANTED to involve the Chinese. He saw the Korean war as a way to destroy Chinese communism. He got his wish, but not in the way he wanted it. But it was absolutely a war crime what the US did in North Korea, not the least the bombing of the dikes which unleashed the flood waters, causing massive flooding, famine and devastation throughout the north.

The US committed war crimes in the Korean War. No one can deny that – just as the Chinese and North Koreans committed war crimes as well. What was North Korea’s mandate when they invaded the South with the permission of the USSR? You’ll also remember that the aggressive MacArthur was fired by Truman after the Chinese intervened.

All in all, the South Koreans were very lucky that the US (UN) intervened to save their ass from certain defeat and subjugation.

I never understand what your goal is here.
I understand if it is your job..which I highly suspect..but don’t your superiors expect something other than this absurd trolling.
You never make anything look better..you don’t bring facts to alter anyone’s opinions…you just spew these absurd posts.
What possible reason could you have posting day after day, argumentative posts…other than being hasbara.
God forbid DoD would be paying you to be unreasonable and offensive.

What is your goal Grace?
Please explain why you think people who disagree with you are being paid or have a nefarious purpose?
If you can counter an argument with facts do it. Making false accusations based on nothing but your own paranoia doesn’t count.

Oh and I’m still waiting for you to provide you evidence of the US contributing to the deaths in South Sudan.

I did answer you re S Sudan and I then asked you how S Sudan was better off now than being part of Sudan.
I’m awaiting that answer.

As for craigsummers…it is not that I disagree with his posts as much as I he simply says, in this case, the North invaded first therefore they had it coming.
That’s it on every topic.
If you think he’s doing a good job..then great.
I find it easier to understand another view when it’s presented in a more thoughtful way.
When trolls slam a thread it seems to alienate rather than persuade.

Paranoid people don’t need a reason to be paranoid Grace. Again what evidence do you have for your accusation about why Craig is hear?
He says the North invaded first on every topic? Really ? Why in this case does that upset you ? Do you have a problem with facts being presented when they go against what you thought was true? How is he slamming the thread and what exactly makes him a troll. I’m curious because declaring someone a troll rather than debating a point seems to be a common tactic here.
As for South Sudan no you never did tell me how the US was responsible for the conflict and whether they are better off is besides the point. That is not what we were discussing. You thought Darfur was in South Sudan and the US was responsible for that. But Im all ears Grace lets see you give an action taken by the US that led to the conflict in South Sudan.

“…….As for craigsummers…it is not that I disagree with his posts as much as I he simply says, in this case, the North invaded first therefore they had it coming……..”

That is not what I said at all. That is simply you making something up, Grace. The North Korean people did not have it coming. They were caught up in a war they had nothing to do with. This was the decision by the propped up government of North Korea approved by Russia to attempt to reunite the Koreas – by force. It is as simple as that. The decision cost millions of lives.

In addition, had the US defeated the North Koreans and reunited the country, this might have saved millions of lives in North Korea. The North Korean people continue to suffer under the Stalinist regime that has now been in place for over half of a century propped up mainly by China. In other words, the North Koreans continue to suffer because of Chinese and Russian interference in the Korean War.

The World Jewish Congress declared war on Germany in 1933, as reported in a blaring New York Times headline. Claiming that war was being declared “on behalf of all Jews”, economic boycotts against Germany followed, along with agitating for war with Germany and the destruction of the German people. Six years later World Jewry got what they openly said they wanted, total war against Germany and the German people. Amidst the terror bombing of German cities by the Allies, Hitler threatened retaliation against the enemy population of Jews in Europe. The Allies didn’t stop the slaughter of German civilians via the saturation bombing of cities, and Hitler made good on his threat of retaliation against enemy Jewish civilians. Many Jews loyal to Germany remained untouched, as is evidenced by the fact that millions of German Jews were still alive at the end of the war.

The bombing of cities is no different than putting people in front of a wall and shooting them. It is either a war crime, or nothing is.

This is very incisive and provides another perspective to the Korean Peninsula issue.Yes! its true !The North Koreans still leave in the 50’s so to speak! But they still remember that Juche idea brought them this far!

Its quite difficult to convince the people that the US is not an enemy with the way my Uncle Trump is giving the Military Industrial Complex sway! But the world has changed! There can be surprises where we dont expect them!

He sees a 2 track “inner” and “outer” propaganda system. Juche is “outer” which means it is boilerplate material for foreign “experts” to consume. I recall trying to read some of the stuff once and “boilerplate” is being kind.

“Inner” track propaganda is strictly for internal consumption. Its purpose is to promote the racial superiority of Koreans.

He also has a different idea on why NK wants nuclear weapons. It’s too much to go into here but look up some of his speeches on Youtube. If Myers is right about the nukes then the current administration is all wrong in its approach.

I don’t think Mehdi is really one of “us.” I think he just borrowed that identification for the sake of arguing that the North Koreans hate “us.” I don’t think they really do. He probably hates “us” more than they do, when it comes down to it. Personally, I don’t bother with any “us” except me and Mother.

Japan, Italy, and Germany are no longer filled with hate for the US. In WW2 and Korea, carpet bombing was the norm. There was no “precision” weaponry. Military commanders of the time advocated battlefield nukes, and nuclear artillery everywhere.

North Koreans hat America because they are ignorant of the US. A series of totalitarian leaders, for the last 70 years, has lied to their people. “Educating” children in schools to hate America has little to do with the memories of the war, and everything to do with the lust for power that DPRK’s leaders have.

The war was not forgotten. Many have heard the stories from their grandparents, as I have. War is cold and brutal. The Korean War was no exception. We went into the war hoping to end it quickly and mercilessly, because that was the lesson we learned from WW2.

The next Korean War will only be nuclear if we wait. Finishing this soon will save lives in the long run. Too many people believe that the absence of war is peace. That is not true. When a dictator openly threatened his allies, like Kim did today, and seeks nukes for a preemptive strike, you have to end the imagined “peace”.

The article says that DPRK began the hostilities in the Korean War by ‘invading.’ How does one invade their own country? Even in the case of the Civil War, liberals don’t say that the Union ‘invaded’ the South.

Obviously, the Korean War plays a role in how politics plays out inside the DPRK and southern Korea.

“‘The hate, though,’as long-time North Korea watcher Blaine Harden observed in the Washington Post, ‘ is not all manufactured.’” LOL! What a crock of BS! If the entire world could get passed Germany’s aggression in World Wars I and II, and the US and Japan can put Unit 731, Hiroshima and Nagasaki behind us…then North Korea and Blaine Harden are WAY WAY WAY off base. More blame America schlock. North Korea are a pack of saber-rattling lunatics.

Spot on. America’s bravely put Hiroshima and Nagasaki behind it. So why can’t these N Koreans forget that we flattened their country and killed 1 in 5 of them?
Apologists say it’s because the N Koreans fear we’d do it again, at the drop of a hat. But I agree with you, the real reason is obviously because they’re of inferior, war-crazed, lunatic stock. The type who need another good B52ing, in order to make the world safe for democracy.

Proably sarcasm because nobody could be that evil. But it doesn’t matter anyway because China and Russia won’t allow the US to start bombing N.Korea and if the US does anyway, your country is going to be nuked thoroughly at the same time as Russia and China are getting it. Then the country that didn’t do as thorough a job gets to have their people suffering and dyinig for the longest.
luv from Canada.

This article is part of an ongoing series at The Asia-Pacific Journal commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the start of the US-Korean War.

The American Air War and the Destruction of North Korea

[. . .]
For the Americans, strategic bombing made perfect sense, giving advantage to American technological prowess against the enemy’s numerical superiority. The American command dismissed British concerns that mass bombardment would turn world opinion against them, insisting that air attacks were accurate and civilian casualties limited.6 Russian accusations of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets did not register with the Americans at all.

But for the North Koreans, living in fear of B-29 attacks for nearly three years, including the possibility of atomic bombs, the American air war left a deep and lasting impression. The DPRK government never forgot the lesson of North Korea’s vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice continued to strengthen anti-aircraft defenses, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a position again.

The long-term psychological effect of the war on the whole of North Korean society cannot be overestimated. The war against the United States, more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats that would continue long after the war’s end.

Thank you for that link. This article and the comments have opened my eyes. I am shocked at my ignorance of this history, but even more shocked that it has never even occurred to me to look deeper. That is uncharacteristic for me. So odd that no news program, no movie, no one discusses this extremely pertinent history. It’s creepy.

Germany was NOT the aggressor in WWI, btw. WWI started after the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Serbia refused Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to hand over the assassin; thus, igniting the fires of WWI. Germany was the last country to enter that war, right after Britain and France.
So, how on Earth did you come up with nonsense of Germany, the last entrant in that war, be the aggressor? Please do us a favor and engage brain before inserting foot.

I have a question for you. Where on Earth did you come up with Germany being the aggressor in WWI, when it was the last country to enter it? WWI was started by Serbia’s provocations following the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, by a Serbian nationalist. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire issued an ultimatum to Serbia and Serbia refused and mobilized its own military forces, WWI erupted from Austro-Hungary’s reaction from the Serb mobilization. Russia (followed by Britain and France) backed up Serbia, and Germany backed up Austro-Hungary.
So, how did you get the part that Germany started that war, when, in reality, it was the last one to join in?

Of course Germany was the aggressor. It’s always the same. The Germans compound themselves with nationalist Poles, Ukrainians, Croatians and Baltics and try to conquer Russia with its great lands and great resources. In the end they fail and have to be liberated by the US and are forever so sorry for what they have done.
This is the story of WW1 and of WW2 and it will be the story after today’s conflicts in Eastern Europe will have led to another war.
All the rest are just historical footnotes.

You know, you might actually ask North Koreans about their “hatred” of Americans, because unless you are a part of the US government, that hatred does not exist. I have been twice to North Korea, and the people are just like those in South Korea–warm, friendly, a bit shy, but really wonderful people. They do NOT hate America or Americans. They DO hate and fear a government that has a) bombed and napalmed their country into near oblivion as part of an invading, foreign army that was interfering in their attempt to unify the peninsula–a division caused by that very country, with the “promise” that the division was a temporary blip that would be resolved with an election to unify the country under one government; b) a government that has threatened them since the signing of the armistice, including placing nuclear weapons pointed at their seat of government since 1958; c) sanctioned and helped starve thousands of their people, making it very difficult for the country to engage in legitimate forms of business; and d) broken every promise made to them, casting them as the belligerents for wanting to defend their country. It goes without saying that the current situation is beneficial to both the DPRK and the United States….the DPRK can cast the US as an enemy trying to destroy the country, as they tried in 1950, and the US can have a bogeyman in East Asia so that we can maintain our military presence in Japan and South Korea, and sell them our expensive and sophisticated weapons. Meanwhile, it is the people who suffer…a gentle people who have NEVER attacked a foreign country in their 5000 year history–not exactly the kind of record that we in the US have racked up. We need a peace treaty NOW with the DPRK, an end to the threats of regime change, and an understanding that the situation between North and South Korea is THEIR problem to work out amongst themselves, without the interference of China, Japan, Russia OR the USA. Of course all those countries have their own national security interests to think of, but fundamentally, this is a KOREAN problem that should be taken care of BY KOREANS.

North Korea alleges that the US used biological weapons against Korean civilians during the war– dropping “germ” bombs containing insects, shellfish and feathers infected with anthrax, typhoid and bubonic plague on villages across the country.

The US has always vehemently denied these claims, dismissing them as crude and outlandish communist propaganda from a secretive and totalitarian state.

Nevertheless, the accusations have refused to go away. Pyongyang continues to press for an apology for an “outrage” that the US insists never happened.

This documentary has been scrubbed from the internet. Someone should ask YouTube what is going on? Are they deliberately hiding information? How is this happening? Is this “tweaking their algorithm?”

If you are a journalist, this could happen to you. You are being disappeared.

I must admit that I was unaware of those numbers. I didn’t think that North Korea had much industrial infrastructure to bomb, and assumed that our bombing would have been limited to destroying what little there was, plus military targets. I didn’t know we destroyed everything else as well.

Wow, extraordinary article, thank you for that. I’m sorry to confess that like most Americans, my knowledge of the history of the Korean War is sorely lacking. It’s interesting that as a country we have not processed that war in our usual way: popular academia and news and entertainment media. “The Manchurian Candidate” is the only film I can think of that deals with the Korean War in any way. We glossed over it in college History classes. I don’t recall any History Channel-style series on it, as opposed to the dozens of Vietnam and WW1&2 programs. I wonder why we as a culture have ignored it.

I agree…it’s as if the Korean War has been intentionally set aside, maybe because after all the horrors we imposed..we LOST.
Armistices are not something we, as Americans’ like.
Btw..I recall hearing there was an issue about releasing The Manchurian Candidate.
I’ll check that out later.

There used to be documentaries on YouTube detailing the United States’ use of biological weapons against the people of North Korea. There was even footage of US airman confessing to their crimes. YouTube has censored these videos.

History is being deleted. Soon, even this old story from the telegraph will be gone.

I have a hard time with this one. To begin with, typhoid is spread in water, not by flies. Even if I suppose it’s some other disease — if a biological weapon is transmitted by flies, yet Chinese soldiers can go to the site and pick up the flies, and not be killed en masse, but later on people in the village nearby get sick… that is one shitty biological weapon! A simpler explanation is that there was an outbreak of typhoid in the village, the Chinese couldn’t be bothered to rig up a clean water supply (maybe they were thinking about it) so they made up a cock-and-bull story on the spot to explain the epidemic being due to “American bastards”. And as for the flies… well, there were a lot of people killed by both sides, and I’m guessing one of them was somewhere close by where the villagers weren’t supposed to look. But it might also have been a victim of typhoid … perhaps even being buried somewhere in the watershed, who knows?

What is your point Mehdi?
Other than stating the obvious, war is hell.
Are you suggesting what happened 70 odd years ago is somehow relevant today?
That it justifies the grotesque state that is North Korea?
That the UN and US should have let the communists ravage the south?
That we should have surrendered to Imperial Japan? to the Nazis?

70 odd years ago Japan was nuked, Germany and Italy completely destroyed by the US and allies. Yet all these countries managed to move on and become normal democratic allied nations.

But keep making excuses and help build up criminal dictators, and don’t worry your pretty head, the adults in the room will once again do what it takes to maintain the freedom you continually take for granted.

>Are you suggesting what happened 70 odd years ago is somehow relevant today?

Absolutely, because unlike Japan and Germany, N.K has never been allowed (by the US) to “move on and become normal democratic “. If, on the other hand, the US and it’s vassal states had dropped embargoes, opened diplomatic relations, accepted North Korean offers of a permanent peace treaty instead of an armistice, the north would have been in a much better place today.

Instead, by forming an iron cage around N.K for 70+ years, they’ve essentially shaped and supported the dictatorship.

I don’t need cures, friend, I have facts, you on the other hand, offer nothing but ad hominems.

Regarding vassalage of S.K and Japan: Historical fact proves this. Please don’t let me repeat stuff that is already available in any library.

Don’t manufacture extra facts around the central issue – Venezuela has nothing to do with this issue.

What’s wrong with N.K is this:

a) US driven embargoes and sanctions strangling the innocent civilians – this does greater harm than the Kim family themselves.
b) the massive aerial bombing the USA subjected the population to, resulting in a siege mentality and destructive effects the results of which the population feel to this day.
c) The USA, China and Russia holding this tiny nation hostage as part of their strategic battle to control the far east – regardless of the impact on ordinary people in the region.

You seem ignorant of the historical record showing N.K’s constant calls for peace over 6 decades for peace. I believe I can cure you of this ignorance. Here is the starting point of a trail of research that should lead you to enlightenment on the subject:

Many of the South Korean leaders the US was supporting were Japanese collaborators during WWII while the leaders of the resistance during that period were from the north. Some of them were also communist sympathisers but it was only after WWII that that became an issue. To the North Koreans WWII was not over because the sympathisers were installed in power in the south. The invasion was to unify the country and remove/kill the Japanese sympathisers. Because at the time (and arguably now) the US had binary vision– communist vs non-communist, with us vs against us– they misread the North. And like any hubristic power they repeated the mistake again in Vietnam. The traditional regional power in the region is China and both Korea and Vietnam have long contentious histories with it. US actions, under the presumption that China was behind the ‘insurgent’, actually drove the north of both countries into China’s arms. History is more than headlines and bumper sticker philosophy.

Lance, I couldn’t agree with you more. Indeed, many of the South Korean leaders (Syngman Rhee, for example) were Japanese collaborators during WWII, while the leaders of the resistance were from the North. There were some Communist sympathizers among them .. However, it wasn’t until WWII ended that this became an issue. To the North Koreans, however, WWII wasn’t over because the sympathisers were installed in power in the South.
As you said, Lance, the invasion was to unify the country and remove/kill the Japanese sympathisers .. Because at the time (and arguably now) the USA had binary vision – Communist vs non-Communist, with us vs us – they misread the North .. And, like any hubristic power, they repeated the mistake again in Vietnam. I agree .. The traditional regional power in the region is China, and both Korea and Vietnam have long contentious histories with it. USA actions, presuming that China was behind the “insurgency”, actually drove the north of both countries right into China’s arms. Yes, indeed, history’s more than headlines and bumper sticker philosophy. It’s the words/actions of all parties involved.

Ah, so the Imperial powers dictate that a line they drew through a sovereign country, in complete defiance of their own rules, and hey, presto, that’s it, and anyone who objects is the one to blame for the genocidal hell that the ‘civilized world’ rains down on them for thinking they actually have the right to their own country.
Got it.
But I wonder if you do.

You should improve your understanding of international conflicts and history. A commenter claimed you were knowledgeable of foreign affairs. That was a weird assessment reading your poor review of world politics.

FACT: It was local leaders from North Korea that requested the intervention of the Russian imperial power to start a war with South Korea. And it was the South Koreans themselves who objected to North Korea invading their territory.

Always nice to see you post Baldie. I would think that years of posting might improve your knowledge, but lo and behold, your responses are as worthless as they have always been. Meant to be condescending, you have never had the knowledge or insight to back that up; thus your attempted appearance of great intellect falls way short – as always.

Hello Craig. I see your powers of projection are as powerful as ever, and as usual utterly wasted. Tell us again what arguments are advanced by high school level insults such as yours and swisscheese’s.

It is important to always remember to have a point when you post. And when people ask you what your point was, it’s probably because you forgot to make one. It’s your responsibility, not ours.

“MacArthur, who led the United Nations Command during the conflict, wanted to drop “between 30 and 50 atomic bombs … strung across the neck of Manchuria” that would have “spread behind us … a belt of radioactive cobalt.” “

If (a) the only fact that matters is that North Korea started the war, as you and swisscheese and others keep telling us, then it follows that (b) it would not have mattered whether MacArthur nuked North Korea or not.

Our airbrushing started immediately. Radio and TV programs from 1950 and 1951 occasionally mentioned the war, but rarely even used the name Korea. It was “our current military activity” or similar phrases. Unlike WW2, the details wouldn’t help Americans to support the war, so we didn’t hear the details.

I know the purpose of the article was to delineate North Korean resentment, but you paint the picture like the DPRK was victimized.

Real war is hell. It boils down to one side seeks something the other has, and they don’t stop until they get it or have lost or face losing too many people’s lives to continue. War doesn’t end with strong words. North Korea started the war, pouring across the border to absorb South Korea. That was only going to end with handing them the country, or killing enough of their combatants that they’re unable to continue. Complain about how ugly that fact is all you want, it’s still a fact.

If civilian installations were being bombed after military targets had been exhausted, it’s not because of ruthlessness. It’s because North Korea was still fighting. Still aggressing. Armistice talks were actually in effect for the latter two years of the war during the air campaign. Yet the war continued because people were still fighting, still dying, still refusing to back down. North Korea wasn’t in the fetal position being kicked while the US took its time. They were still supplying troops to fight. If you want to blame China for that, okay, but if civilian centers were being bombed because military targets were exhausted, the alternative was just returning to a defensive posture, and that wouldn’t have facilitated an armistice with the belligerent side when they were the ones protracting the negotiations.

War is called “hell” for a reason. It’s easy to be short-sighted and fixate on the individual horrors while ignoring the conditions that led to them, and it’s a person’s self-righteousness to do so. But it doesn’t make the accusations any more than that: self-righteous hindsight.

Still fighting? Still aggressing? How can you be called the “aggressor” when you are defending your own country? The UN mandate for the Korean conflict was to remove the North Korean forces from South Korea. By the way, it wasn’t the Koreans who had divided the country in two–it was the Americans. Two Americans, to be exact, who later admitted they did not understand the history of Korea (what a surprise–Americans not understanding history) or they would never have divided it “the way they did.” NOTE: not that “they never would have divided it” just never “the way they did.” Both North and South Korea viewed the military action as a civil war, meant to unify the peninsula–something the US PROMISED would take place in a “short time.” There had been skirmishes along the border for years before the outbreak of the war. We absolutely had no moral or legal authority to push the war past the 38th parallel, but that didn’t matter to MacArthur, who saw his chance for fame in the once and for all abolition of Chinese communism. This entire exercise of US involvement was to test our new Cold War initiative of confronting the USSR and China at every opportunity. It’s obvious from the reports of the treatment of the local people by US forces that they did not hold the Korean people in high esteem (they called them gooks, because the Korean word for Americans is “Mi-guk”, and it’s just like Americans to think that Koreans were calling themselves “gooks”). Everything the US did above the 38th parallel was a war crime, pure and simple. And you would be hardpressed to explain why North Korea did not have the right to attempt to unite their country. Simply because we did not like their form of government is not a reason for getting involved in their war.

The south with forces from 17 additional countries, including the US, which had overall command of the entire war. When the North “invaded” the south there were no Russian or Chinese troops among them, nor any calling the shots.

the wallstreet valuation scam is on the verge of collapse as the dollars IN CIRCULATION keep shrinking. As the dollars shrink, the wallstreet thieves make attempts to compensate for underlying valuation support by fraudulently raising stock prices. This sort of criminal fraud has a breaking point. Wallstreet thieves have decided that war, just like WWII, is the answer to their currency fraud. They figure that death and destruction are their best solution to crank up the loans and flood the economy with more loan money for “non-building” spending which dead ends real quickly unless they STEAL LAND. Their land theft operation is not playing out well in the middle east so they figure they can steal the land of north korea.

This is something that needs to be made more public, the bombing of North Korea which was a war crime. However when you know as much about Korea as I do you can see the weaknesses in the argument on both sides. For example if North Korea has every reason to hate the U.S then how do you explain their hatred for South Korea, not even the until recent far right dictatorship but the average South Korean? They constantly kidnap South Koreans and never return them to their families, sunk the Cheonan, shot a unarmed South Korean tourist, shelled a civillian island, bombed a Korean Air airliner, it goes on and on and on and on. How do you explain the failure of the Sunshine Policy where South Korea gave aid with no strings attached and they responded with a nuclear test?

This is why I advocate war. “Giving” them peace only emboldened them to act up some more. Kim Jung Il told his people that the humanitarian aid the US and UN provided in the 90s and 2000s were “reparations” after the US lost the war.

North Koreans don’t hate the US because they “remember” the war, they hate the US because they have been fed a false history that feeds the hate. We conquered Japan, Italy, and Germany in WW2. They are better for it, and on very friendly terms.

The war never ended. Trump wouldn’t need a declaration of war from Congress. Kim Jong Un has made enough threats, and enough progress on his ICBM/Nuke programs. Time to put an end to the threats, conquer the poor country, and welcome it’s people to this century.

If you interested in a different than MSM chorus of war propaganda, angle on the NK issue here it is:

Whatever your geopolitical persuasion if you think that number one problem with Boy Un of NK is that he is a madman soon to be equipped with nukes capable of reaching US West coast think again.

First if he really was a madman he already have proven weapons (possible also chemical WMD) capable of reaching 200 miles into US shores from his fleet of submarines periodically visiting US west coast. One can gamble whether they would work or not but it is crazy to place such a bet while living in San Francisco.

Second, if you think that raised and educated in Switzerland Boy Un is a madman I would point you to another madman in WH to nuke.

In fact what is dangerous about Boy Un is his infatuation with the western commercial culture and consumerism that exceeds his farther’s, making him prone to addiction to greed rather than power alone, the very weapon of mass economic destruction that devastated America already so in fact there is nothing to conquer in the US except for Grizzly bears an Grand canyon while they last.

Well still, if you think the Boy Un and his (and NK people) worshiping of his ancestors (dad and granddad) is weird ask any Japanese who is current emperor of Japan. He will tell you Emperor is a direct descendants of the Sun, yes, the Sun (god) had sex with another god and made first Japaneses emperor.

Too much cult worshiping for you.

The cult worshiping in embedded in Asian culture much more than in western culture and serves a way of command and control of the people under made up phony religious-like (in NK ideological) claims of divinity of the ancestors that cannot be questioned or denied.

Talking to ghosts of ancestors was as popular a millennium ago as it is today in Japan, just examine NHK broadcast from this year alone documenting otherwise relational Japanese talking with ghosts of the dead.

What you see in NK is what you saw in Japan between 1845 and 1945 under ideology of Shinto cult and after 1945 is the same cult covered with western commercial culture while the “soul of Japanese people” remains the same as in NK or even SK, former under political Soviet/Chinese grip while latter under US grip.

Actually with Trump it is hard to say who is crazy or unstable Trump or Boy Un.

It was Un father who begin to work on nuclear weapons and ICBMs after he saw what happened with Saddam Hussein, wrongly accused of WMD and removed with no shred of evidence. Un who grew up in Switzerland continued his father plans but more for economic reasons than geopolitical reasons.

Believe or not Un supported massive reduction of military in NK that constitutes a huge burden obstacle for faster development of consumer market, he wants to see in NK (he remakes Pyongyang into a western style city, rather the soviet style city of his grandfather) and most of all he wanted to develop the efficient agriculture since in NK they have only 4 months of agricultural season.

But there was another solution to the problem of invigorating NK economy via reduction in military spending that was on the table for twenty years already, namely mutual reduction of military in NK and SK and withdrawal of US troops following signing finally a peace treaty with Japan with war reparations and developing method and schedule for reunification.
And all the recent click biting hysteria that NK was abandoned by China or China turned enemy of NK are all rumors, propaganda spread among competing Chinese party leadership before communist party congress later this year.

In fact just two weeks ago Chinese FM re-stated that China’s prescription for peace follow those lines, position unchanged for last decade: US out – nukes out.

US flatly rejected it every-time it was proposed even by SK government, because as Chinese tell us even today, US is not there in SK to fight/protect against NK but to protect their own self-imposed hegemonic interests in Asia (and perhaps keep peace between both Koreas and Japan since old wounds did not heal yet) and hence deployed THAAD that radar covers over 1000 miles into highly militarized Manchuria, China.

In fact the refusal of post WWII peace treaty by US was to protect Japan from massive reparations for FORTY years long Japanese occupation and enslavement of Koreans.
It is laughable reading US MSM aimed for American sheeple, brainwashing about NK as it is run by a unstable psychotic (which he may as well be) while these are US policies that are surely psychotic and put the world on the verge of nuclear war for nothing at all.

In fact Kim dynasty is a direct product of American belligerence after WWII and continuing preventing any equitable peace arrangements in the region.

The question for all of us remain why?

Why NK is not allowed her own “Nixon trip to China”, normalization of relations like with Nixon did with communist China, opening up relations and by that weaken the autocratic rule in NK they fraudulently clam they seek?

The answer is that Japan could have to face up to $Trillion in war reparations for four decades of occupation of Korea most importantly that US imperial military would have been obsolete there, would have no excuse to be there and by that US grip in the region would diminish and that D.C. neocons would never accept.

“For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, ”

But it was the South Korean regime under dictator Rhee who began military operations against the North. As to who did in reality fire that shot, Bruce Cumings, head of the history department at the University of Chicago, gave us the definitive answer in his two-volume The Origins of the Korean War, and The Korean War: A History: the Korean war started during the American occupation of the South, and it was Rhee, with help from his American sponsors, who initiated a series of attacks that well preceded the North Korean offensive of 1950. From 1945-1948, American forces aided Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do – where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee’s US-backed forces.

Actually, I think it’s not intentional on his part, I think it’s just plain lack of knowledge about a subject which has recently become the latest fashion in the news cycle. He is not a scholar of Korean history and this reflects in his shallow treatment of it in this article. I suspect he read a couple of Wikipedia pages on the subject and promptly proceeded to take a position on the subject to jump on the bandwagon and “have his voice heard”.

Having lost a father in this ‘engagement’, released from service post-WWII but called back to active duty within 30 days of full release, returned to full duty as Air Force soldier and put into full combat…shot down, listed POW (eventually KIA, with no body returned) with name carved on a brick in a Chinese POW camp as only trail of where he was taken…watching my mother relive the sorrow & loss every time the Military contacted her to say a few remains had been turned back over and were being DNA tested in Hawaii – please await our findings, said the Military – until the day she died 5 months ago…After all this, I say – f*ck China & Russia’s governments at the time for their duplicity in manipulating the conflict in the first place, and f*ck Kim / current Regime for bringing us back to the brink of repeating the stupidity of what happened before.

Wow 20% of the population!! I am curious. How did you get to that number?
North Korea population around 1950 varies between 9,000,000 to 9,600,000 (James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of the Korean War, 1988). (Nicholas Eberstadt, 2010)

According to you the US and its allies killed at least 1,800,000 NORTH KOREANS civilians during the Korean wars.

The highest number of North Korean civilian deaths I could find is from Prof. RJ Rummel. He put it at a mid range of 1,185,000, which includes civilians killed by North Koreans themselves. That is approximately 13% of the population if you use the lowest population estimate. Again, Rummel includes civilians killed by North Koreans themselves and he cautioned his readers:

“But these figures are little more than educated guesses.” (Chapter 10, Statistics of Democide, 1997)

You claim the US exterminated 20% of the North Korean population between 1950-1953. How did you get to that number?

Do you have the slightest idea of how to analyze claims?
You supposed to review the credibility of the source and study the procedures the authors follow in order to get to that number. The book is called Statistics of Democide, 1997.

Dude, I gave you the name of the author, Prof. R.J Rummel, the name of the book, and the year. I am not responsible for your laziness!! Here is the book from the University of Hawaii (chapter 10 relates to the Korean War)https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP10.HTM

A further note. You seem to have forgotten that you are trying to prove that the 20% figure is impossible. In other words, you’ve set yourself a much higher standard than the one I have to meet to simply suggest that it is not impossible. So far you are failing.

20% is an underestimate, the real numbers are closer to 30% when one includes knock-on effects in the immediate aftermath. Straight from the horses mouth though:

“From the Truman Doctrine to Obama. The history of the 1950s Korean war confirms that extensive war crimes were committed against the Korean people. As confirmed by the statement of General Curtis Lemay:

“Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”

North Korea lost close to thirty percent of its population as a result of US led bombings in the 1950s. US military sources confirm that 20 percent of North Korea’s population was killed off over a three period of intensive bombings:”

1) 2,730,000 is the TOTAL CIVILIANS DEATHS. That means North Korea, South Korea, China and any other civilians killed in the conflict. The 20% number relates to NORTH KOREA. How the hell you gonna use the total civilian deaths on all side to calculate the percentage of population decimated in North Korea??

2) LEARN HOW TO REVIEW SOURCES. Wikipedia is citing Hugh Dean’s “The Korean War 1945-1953″. Hugh Dean
a) blamed the conflict on the US
b) claimed South Korea started the invasion. Again, Hugh Dean claimed South Korea started the invasion
c) did not explain how he got to that number (20%)
d) 25,000 North Koreans POWs were released unconditionally by South Korea because they wanted to stay in South Korea. Hugh Dean suggested they were coerced into defection

(1) When did I say there were 2,730,000 North Korean civilian deaths? When did I calculate the percentage of population killed in North Korea? Are you OK?

The key word there is “median.” That means it could be higher and it could be lower. If only half of all those deaths were northern (and we are unable to be more precise than this due to poor information), and the above calculation of 28% overall is valid, then that is a minimum of 14% inflicted on the North. (Notice I have made no claim that the US killed more Northerners than the North killed Southerners, although since we had the bombs, and the North occupied the South only briefly, this conclusion is inevitable.)

I assumed this was obvious. And is there really a substantial difference between a rough 15% estimate and a rough 20% estimate?

You will need to back up your assertion that Chinese civilians were included in that total, since no one invaded China.

(2) Dean probably got the 20% number from LeMay, who may well have been boasting but at least he was there. The rest of your comment is irrelevant.

The main point here is that you tried to dismiss an estimate that you are unable to dismiss.

Good luck to you. And thanks for that link to Rummel. (Oddly, I don’t run out to the library or bookstore every time a random crank mentions a book on The Intercept.)

I don’t understand your obsession. You do realize the quality of information here is very poor, correct? Your “Professor” told you that.

(1) I didn’t say 2,730,000 North Korean civilians were killed. That’s the total civilians killed per Wikipedia. That number can’t include Chinese civilians, because China was neither invaded nor bombed in the Korean War.

I meant to paste in and calculate the total percentage, not the North Korean percentage, but was on my way out the door and was too hasty:

9.5 million in 1950
20.8 million in 1950
2.7 million killed
= 9%

That’s plenty high. The key word here is “median.” If—

(1) the total number was actually higher than 2.7 million, and
(2) North Korean deaths were significantly undercounted, as seems likely in three years of bombing where the US did not have access, and
(3) all excess mortality is included (see the LeMay quote above regarding the starvation and exposure that would have resulted from US bombing as described by LeMay) …

then this easily allows a much higher estimate of the percentage of North Korean civilian dead.

Note: The Lancet’s estimates of civilian deaths in the invasion of Iraq solved the same problem, in that lower estimates by the US counted only bodies, while higher estimates included people killed as a direct result of the war but not in the war.

(2) Dean probably got the 20% estimate from LeMay, which has already been pointed out to you. LeMay might have been boasting, but at least he was there. On the other hand, his sources are probably unpublished, and he’s dead.

The rest of your post is irrelevant smoke. You still have not shown that 20% is an invalid upper estimate, and you haven’t presented any numbers that we have any reason to believe are significantly better.

20% is not an estimate at all! It was a wild guess by LeMay, that much is clear from his original quoted, which was altered in this article precisely to give the false impression that it was a statement of fact.
You obviously don’t know how to judge the veracity of claim. Gullibility and confirmation bias is at the root of our post-truth era…

“You do realize the quality of information here is very poor, correct? Your “Professor” told you that.”

YES. EXACTLY. You seem to be the one who did not notice it. If the quality of information is very poor, so how the hell you got to 20%? The burden of proof is not on me. LeMay suggested it, Hasan repeated it and you support it. Then, you have the duty to tell us how you got that number. That is not on me to prove it.

1) “That number can’t include Chinese civilians, because China was neither invaded nor bombed in the Korean War.”
a) That is the most stupid statement I have ever read here. Let’s match it with another stupid statement:
“That number can’t include American civilians, because the US was neither invaded nor bombed in the Korean War”
Really? Dude, find out what the word CIVILIAN means. It was a nasty war. So American civilians living in SK were targeted and killed, and Chinese civilians living in NK or who were moving with the PVA were also targeted and killed.
You are doing the same flawed calculation: Using the total number of civilians killed on ALL side to conclude that 20% of the NORTH KOREAN population was decimated. No serious high school teacher would accept that laughable math. Even after using that ridiculous logic, you get 9% of KOREANS not NORTH KOREANS.

b) “the total number was actually higher than 2.7 million”
You are still using the total number of civilian deaths on ALL sides! It is up to you to prove by how much it was higher and how you got it. NOT ON ME.

2) “Dean probably got the 20% estimate from LeMay, which has already been pointed out to you. LeMay might have been boasting, but at least he was there.”

The fact that he was there does not mean his numbers are correct. Does it?

“You still have not shown that 20% is an invalid upper estimate”

You have to prove is valid because you are the one supporting it. NOT ME.

If you want to believe any number you want because you want to blame the US for everything, then this is your right. You can go up as far as 60%. However, reasonable individuals who understand basic math and statistics do not have to accept your flawed calculations.

Charles K. Armstrong: “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

So what the article here does is turn less than 3 million total casualties (including soldiers and injuries) into more than 3 million civilian deaths. And turn 12-15% of NK population dead during the war (from all causes) into 20% killed by the US air bombings. It’s clearly manipulated for the purpose of political propaganda.

The 20% or even 30% are the numbers they want to believe. Another writer can even come up with 60% and they will accept it because it helps their argument that the US was the greatest villain in the conflict. The facts are completely irrelevant. It is like Fox News viewers who believe Obama was born in Kenya. Birth certificates, eyewitness statements are irrelevant. You could take them to Haiwaii in the 60’s with a time machine and they will still believe he was born in Africa. The bottom line is that in their mind this guy is not American and he should not be elected. It is the same here. They do not like the US so they are ready to blame it for everything.

I think he’s just trying to point out the historical context in which the NK position evolved.
Of course, he may be a little biased; and ignoring history running up to the Korean war but, who cares about that. Let’s just list the atrocities on the one side.:

Beside the air raids, this war was as devastating as it was because it swung back and forth. First (after years of confusing tensions at the border) the North invaded the South and got till the southern shores. Then the US and the UK plus some minor allies joined the war and occupied nearly the whole peninsula. Now finally China steped in and the orignal border is reestablished.
With the exception of Pusan in South Korea, more or less every town of the country (both north and south) was fought over several times and at least partially destroyed by it. And in the end neither side won… Everyone was a loser (except of course arms manufacturers).

As history shows North Korea started the Korean War. In the bible they purge the evil by killing all even the women and children. Had we done this and killed everyone (purged the evil) we would not be dealing with this evil today. So why do you twist the evil to America we are not the evil that started the war?

“America is the greatest purveyor of Violence in the World Today!” Martin Luther King

Colonialism, Imperialism and White Racist Supremacy has killed and murdered more people and destroyed more lives than any plagues or natural disasters since the Great Flood of Noah’s time! Colonialism, Imperialism and White Racist Supremacy is “Genetic Defect” in a certain race of people!

And it comes in the guise of “We discovered You, so therefore we can plummet, rape, pillage, exploit, enslave, govern you and your resources for the benefit of ourselves, our children and their children’s children and damn your families and children, and if you resist, We shall kill you!”

I tell you, this is a “Genetic Defect,” a “Psychotic Disorder” that lay dormant in many for years, but is now blooming again! Some of you need to take genetic test!

My bad… Weeds don’t blossom!

Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?
A: Because there’s no American Embassy in the United States.

Maybe you should talk to the real victims of Stalinism and some of the South Koreans who’s relatives were massacred by the Communist forces of North Korea and China at the behest of Mao and Stalin. I thank the United Nations forces fore saving Asia from Stalinism, what is to justify here? Go to North Korea I am sure they would welcome you with open arms and do your research on the mass graves of the peoples that defied Stalinism, now that is a story worth telling!.

So, North Koreans live in a closed-off society with very little access in or out, but Hasan is certain of the fact that they all genuinely “hate” the US? The ramblings of the latest North Korean dictator should be taken as representative of all North Koreans?

Why would they have any affection for us?
Are you saying you have evidence that they don’t hate us…or is that wishful thinking, as we were certain the Iraqi’s were waiting for our blessed liberation.
Did Kim Jun Un’s half brother like us..or is this a message from Franklin Graham?

China will not tolerate an American occupation of the Korean Penninsula, period.

Who knows . Kim Jon Un is probably most aware of the West..particularly America.
He made the mistake of wanting basketball diplomacy rather than ping pong or his father’s orchestral diplomacy.
China won’t go to war, but will retaliate with financially. That delicate house of cards won’t take much to collapse.
You do know they are building a large base near us in Djibouti.
Time will tell, but again, that peninsula is not worth the blood or treasure.
But then again, I don’t know much about it.

The locals in that area where the system is deployed are, yes. Is there currently widespread South Korean popular opposition to the general US presence in the country, though?

Also, it’s interesting that South Koreans supported the THAAD following the DPRK’s nuclear and rocket tests. But after the latest Seoul corruption scandal and Trump’s vow that much of the cost would be borne by South Korea, the for-real protesters came out in force.

Park represented the support for an aggressive stance against the North.
I’d think some of that may have fizzled with corruption scandal you mention.

It seems many in the South have family in the North and aren’t too excited about an actual war.
Who knows…I am not excited about losing American lives over the peninsula and the idea that China can send us into a rapid financial meltdown, by switching to a gold backed trading currency is disturbing.

It wasn’t that long since the NY Symphony Orchestra played in Pyongyang.
It would be nice to get back to finding some commonalities.

The problem is a young country compared to most others. Added to this many Americans view of the world ends at the coasts of the USA.

Remember when Bush 2 tried to find Middle East countries on a wall map? And he is the guy who went to war – just as well the Pentagon has better knowledge of geography.

The Greeks hate the Turks – a small conflict that is over 400 years old. The Vietnamese hate the Chinese, because the latter occupied VietNam for a Thousand Years.

Americans ‘flip the bird’, the English equivalent is the V-sign, displayed with the palm inward towards the signer. Legend holds that the two-fingered V-sign derives from a gesture made by English longbow-men fighting in at the Battle of Agincourt (AD 1415) during the ‘Hundred Years’ War’ This legend suggests that the English archers captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they could no longer operate their longbows.

When the French lost, again, the British victors greeted captured French soldiers with the V-sign to signify they still had their bow fingers.

Americans have flash memories compared to these countries, and the same applies to the Koreans, northern or southern.

Korea was a really undeveloped country at the time of the Korean War. When the Americans had finished flattening anything resembling a town or city, they then took to bombing ANYTHING – houses, farms, animals, forests, etc.

And Koreans REMEMBER, and Americans FORGET. How many Americans know Seoul was overrun by the north three or four times?

The fighting ended on 1953 July 27 when an armistice was signed. An Armistice is NOT A PEACE TREATY.

So, in reality, the DPRK is just reminding South Korea, and the USA, there is unfinished business.

What kind of liberal misdirection is this article. Best point you made, it was North Korea that started the war. IE it was North Korea that began slaughtering South Koreans. Oh and now you whine that they got their butts kicked in response. They could have surrendered at any time. I guess we should feel bad for Charles Manson or Hitler next. This article made me sick.

And what exactly was our “national interest” in a dispute between North and South Korea halfway around the world ,the resulted in Americans decimating a nation physically and murdering millions of their people from the air?

I’ll give you two guesses. Both are in ways equally correct and intertwined, and neither of them even remotely morally justify the US murdering millions of people half way around the world (vast majority peasants) who were no direct threat to the freedoms or security Americans in America were enjoying between 1950-53.

Buehler, anyone? Buehler?

Feel free to chime in with two guesses if you’ve got them. This should be interesting and demonstrate a point I’ll make after a few weigh in with their guesses to make my point.

a) The U.S. was engaged in a knee-jerk operation to oppose Russian influence. Americans and Russians had “liberated” a huge chunk of the world – next step was fighting over it, naturally.

b) The U.S. claimed a need to oppose Communism as an anti-democratic philosophy. To be fair, it pretty much has been… pity that their own operations didn’t do very much to give a different impression. Traditional Communism suffers from the “resource curse” – by centralizing control of so much social wealth, they make corruption inevitable.

I was speaking of capital-C Comintern Communism, not communism in the ideal, general, indeed non-Marxist (Plato/Jesus/Five Pecks/whatever) abstract sense. For example, a communist society might also be anarchistic in nature in a way that decentralizes control of any commonly held resources to the point where the resource curse I mentioned does not apply, yet does not assign them to such small groups that they become re-privatized. Wikipedia and other open culture projects serve as an imperfect but instructive test-bed for the promise and pitfalls of such approaches.

“In fact, the only thing {Donald Trump’s] mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.”

Apparently this line from Steven Colbert has set twitter alight. ‘Cock’ was bleeped on broadcast TV, of course.
Has anyone told Mackay about this low hanging fruit?
Maybe Mackay is busy plowing the Snowden files for ancient morsels of outrage.

A well written and informative article, albeit is lacking balance by not reporting some of the inhumanities inflicted by the North Koreans on the South Koreans when they invaded and that their military goal was to take the whole Korean Peninsula for itself, regardless of the loss of life. All war is evil but evil incites it and good sometimes responds in evil ways, but let’s not misconstrue the facts.

Interesting article, and as an American I feel a sadness (now unfortunately familiar) when reading such stuff. However, I would say that this is “a” reason for North Korean hate and mistrust of the US, but certainly not the ONLY one. As pointed out by (for example) DAMITJOE below, it leaves a lot out.

North Korea has chosen to continue reinforcing this and even to add to it, no doubt often fictionally. What you describe is part of the utter brutality of total war, however, and it is important to remember that although atrocity and destruction has also been visited on many other nations around the world in recent history, the vast majority have bravely pulled themselves together, moved on, and each, as a nation, has built itself a greater and better place in the world. And it is not because they have forgotten.

Other nations that suffered the war crimes of the US have moved on. What an ignorant predictable thing to say (obviously an American). People like you are the biggest problem the world faces. Spoiled, uneducated, and brainwashed just as much as any North Korean. The forgotten Crime!

Those other countries have been able to pull themselves together and move on because there was a resolution to the conflict. North Vietnam beat the United States. The US beat Japan and Germany. In those other places — North Korea, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan — there was no end to the war, only brief periods of less violence. The US has blood on its hands and your facile excuses only show just how bloody your hands are.

Great article. This website is so refreshing compared to the one sided biased reporting you usually get on mainstream media. Also enjoy reading the comments section. So many educated regulars (i.e… Mona, Grace, barabbas, craig summers, etc…) writing and debating further to the article. No matter which side, left or right, you sit on, keep up the debating comments.

Craig Summers and Mona, do not belong in the same list. I don’t care what that list is. And nuf said is pretty good, except every now and then when he gets a tick, and goes off on an anti-Jewish tangent.

I remember Noam Chomsky used this same lame line about “How North Koreans remember, but we don’t” a couple of years ago to explain how America is really responsible for all the craziness of the hermit kingdom. But it’s obviously not remotely true! Look up life expectancy in North Korea, most everyone with memories of that war are dead and official state propaganda is that North Korea won a glorious victory and even you crazy commie lovers here at The Intercept should know what happens when you contradict the official line in North Korea.

oh i see
the zionic crime syndicate that murders people to steal their land, having lost their propagandist position on the planet with normal people, are now preparing to murder the north koreans to steal their land and or occupy public and private endeavors with their russian styled corporat criminal enterprises.

about your crying doves – probably just a waking dream. You may be sleepwalking from taking too many sleeping pills without taking the accompanying wake-up pills. disclaimer: i am not a physician nor offering medical advice. See your doctor for proper treatment for your condition.

exactly my point, genius – you cannot eat fantasy films.
There are 2 types of people on this planet.
Those who value the planet, food and life support first and those who prefer to live in fantasy land and obligate, subjugate or enslave those who grow the food.

Hasan, South Koreans remember the North Koreans too and Iraquis remember Sadam Hussein, and in the future years Cubans will remember Castro. Your piece is pretty biased and written with a single side of a multi-faceted story. It begins and concludes why the North Korean people hate us. No one denies LeMay’s butchery, from his start during WWII, through the Korean War or that his legacy lives on today. This is evident not just though continued American bombings but that the whole world seems to have adopted his scorched earth style of destruction to achieve an objective. No one deny MacAuthurs political bungling (that soudns erily familar today) . Some of your choice quotes, particularly Douglas’ are just silly, to think that a scorched earth Dresden looks healthy than a scorched earth Keasong. Are we to beleiv e that. Nonsense. The North Korean people remember the savagery of the war because the Government there recalls a BS-enriched daily dose of it that is unavoidable by even workers in the fields as it is blasted via TV, Radio, loudspeakers, truck. Like your article it skips what the brutality and inhumanity war is all about, that they started it, and we dove belly deep into it. You forgot the mention, or didn’t know, or didn’t do a very good job researching North Korean savagery throughout the South, to POWs, Korean, US and UN, and the savagery that continues to this day from any form of perceived dissent. I lived there for 17 years, a little longer than it took you to prepare this BS piece that your wrote. Yes it is all true, but it ends up telling a lie. A lie that day we are the bad guy, a one sides only bunch of bastards that bullied up a defenseless country. That is no where near the truth, and no where near the justice deserved by millions of people who suffered in that war and suffer to this day. I always have enjoyed your work , your interviews, all your pieces. This one leaves out so much. My respect for you asks that you continue and tell the rest of the story, for the sake of the many, instead of the condemning them all through the atrocities of a few. Thanks, Joe

sure – and today vietnam is worse off when the US tucked tail and ran and the gov collapsed and the northern vietnamese slaughtered and enslaved all the south vietnames and the vietnamese love americans…

Barrabbas, I agree, I had you reread your comment several times and am not sure I understand your viewpoint. There is no comparison between the Viet Namese war causation and outcome and the Korean war. There are certainly similarities in the horror, injustice, suffering and atrocities of both wars, and in all wars. Both should never have occurred. Kim should not have invaded the South, and President Truman should have read and taken seriously Ho Chi Minh’s letter and his own OSS advisers’ imploring. The Kim dynasty deserves no respect or quarter, save their ability to kill millions.

North Korea started the Korean War in the same sense that Israel started the Six Day War, yet we call the former aggression and the latter preemptive defense. How Orwellian! Either both started it, or both reacted defensively and justifiably to imminent threats.

You cite Bruce Cummings but I believe it was he (foremost western historian on Korea) who said the south and the US started it covertly while the North was the first (in response) to make it overt with official armies. I’ll try to find the citation. I’m loyal to truth and not one side or another. I don’t mind if Truth has North Korea the aggressive villain. Oftentimes the US held that role too, so I won’t rule it out.

If I say a person isn’t always perfect, they’re not offended. But some idiots will be offended if I say the same thing about my own country.

@Tom; Bingo on your opening paragraph. However, I would cite the support of both China and Russia in the lead up to the war. As well as the continued provision of armaments and manpower as it escalated. The Chinese were complicite in holding U.S. prisoners of war captured on the battlefield – I know this for fact. The Russians were as well, however I do not have the direct factual evidence as I do for the Chinese. In summary – this was a conflict that had every ingredient to become the next WW., but miracoulesly did not. The lives lost from the troops fighting upon demand from the U.S. high command are no less mourned than those from the civilian casualties suffered in N. Korea. All were victims of a chess game played by a select few.

Blah blah blah blah blah…Merika Left…
Nothing to do with the Left…
What is going on that quite a few posters and trolls believe N Korea had it coming …they asked to be carpet bombed ‘back to the stone age’ …and how you embrace imposing the most painful deaths possible …burning flesh…napalm…white phosphorous…yahoo.

Oh boy…lets do it again , but let’s just incinerate them now…because they don’t bloody believe what ‘we’ do??

I’m sure China will be thrilled..to have this on their border…kinda like China nuking and invading Baja?
I think several of you are on cool aid drips today…you’d have to be OR the most gullible simple minded people on earth.
I keep forgetting we have Israeli trolls on board….they love the use of napalm & white phosphorous…they dig that burning flesh..as Egyptians and Palestinians can confirm.

Big surprise…what happens when China says ..’it suits us to trade oil in gold rather than the dollar’… Which would better suit them than selling off our T notes with diminishing value.

That will be the real burn…when have collapsed economy sooner than expected…and will make Zimbabwees economy look f’n peachy..

It’s not a left or right issue… It’s the capacity to be honest…its morality..its tolerance. Simple minded people that believe all MSM …and THEY are all bad…are better evidence of the group think that comes from a police state. Duh

“……..Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans…….”

The anti-American left also has selective amnesia of the Korean War. The US repelled the invasion by the North giving South Korea a chance to democratize and thrive as opposed to the North Korean regime where millions died after the war due to murderous economic policies, gulags and political repression. Fighting communism was an ideological war. The US fought for access to cheap T-shirts – and succeeded. This success – which is on full display with a thriving democracy adjacent to a brutal Stalinist regime – is of course hated by the anti-American left; thus, the war is rarely mentioned even though millions died.

What the radical left highlights are US failures like the war in Vietnam (which still does not hold free elections). Again, the US was fighting an ideological war. To the radical left, failure by the US is a victory. The more civilians that die in the process, the better. If the Taliban win in Afghanistan, that’s a victory despite the catastrophic human rights implications.

Beating back US imperialism is more important than human rights and democracy. It was a “US-backed coup” in Ukraine – not the last 100 years of Russian domination of Ukrainian affairs that mattered (in the Russian sphere of influence). The First Gulf War is never mentioned by the extreme left, but the destabilization of Libya into a civil war will always be highlighted. The liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein is a mere footnote, the Iraq war is a daily reminder of US imperialism. The Camp David Agreement ending hostilities between Egypt and Israel is ignored; US aid to the Egyptian regime is the focal point. The anti-American left not only exists on American failure, but hopes for it even at the expense of human rights and democracy.

Imagine there are some people on this earth who raise a quizzical eyebrow at the US military’s 70-year worldwide tour of nuking, napalming, false-flagging, cluster-bombing, phospherous-bombing, bullying and regime-change.

your presence is like a weather report
always you show up and voila some evil minded imbeciles are preppaing to attack and murder and steal.
thanks for the heads up.
ps – murdered any palestinians lately?

You clearly don’t have a clue about the anti-American extreme left.
Of course we talk about US’ evil-doing in all of the three gulf wars (yes 3, by “first Gulf war” you actually mean the second), Korea, Israel and so on. We even hate this USAID bullshit. https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7069
By the way, in the 50’s South Korea was not a democracy, but a military dictatorship. The first civilian Presidant took office as recently as 1992.

True enough Zaid, but they were able to democratize as an ally of the US – something you would have never seen if the North had won the war – or if South Korea fell under Soviet or Chinese control. Taiwan was also a military dictatorship – but also democratized as an ally of the US.

mr craigsummers
democratise? is that what you call it?
won the war? what war was that? let me realign your serious misunderstanding.. the conflict in korea was initiated by the US who occupied south korea as a regime change and the north simply wanted to UNIFY the country just as the north in the US wanted to unify the country in 1865.

and where you say ” Taiwan was also a military dictatorship – but also democratized as an ally of the US.”
THAT IS A LIE. The US sponsored and supported the monster Chiang Kai-shek whose motto was “shoot 1 rule 1000″. The democratisation happened despite US influence the same as democratisation happened in the Philppines despite US criminal operations which i am most familiar with.

so mr. craigsummers, i dont know who pays you for your alternative facts, but you would be taking them for a ride and i suppose they are too stupid to know it.

ps – have any of your children died in any of your advocated conflicts?

You actually believe America is a “democracy”? By definition it isn’t. But that’s beside the point.

Let’s see how far your commitment to the concept of spreading “democracy” goes. If the vast majority of Americans, your fellow citizens, voted to throw out every existing representative, senator and vote in entirely knew House, Senate and President that was committed to Constitutional amendments and statutes that mirrored, say Sweden’s form of government and fundamental laws, would you accept that as a legitimate assertion of “democracy” and peacefully and willingly choose to live under the USA now so constituted?

If not, then please define democracy. Please define under what circumstances you believe majoritarian will of a citizenry should not dictate the form of government and its policies?

If you believe Americans should be in the business of spreading “democracy” at the point of the gun, why are there so many examples in America history of America overtly or covertly overturning the democratic will and process of foreign nations who observe democracy norms to elect leaders or attempt to democratically institute forms of government American leaders don’t like?

Would you like a list of examples of America overthrowing the democratic will of other nation’s citizens?

“……If you believe Americans should be in the business of spreading “democracy” at the point of the gun……”

First of all, you continually just make things up. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I did naively believe that the US could help spur democratic change in Iraq, but I was mostly wrong. The forces supporting political change are overwhelmed – at the moment – by opposition to western values (fundamentalist Islam), authoritarian rule, sectarian-based wars and destabilization in the Middle East by various parties including the US. However, I don’t “believe” that the US should overthrow dictatorships for democratic change. Quit putting words in my mouth. If you have any doubt about what I “believe” then use a quote from one of my posts. There are usually plenty to quote from.

Second of all, the US has not overthrown any government at least recently for democracy with the possible exception of Libya. However, the intervention in Libya was a liberal intervention in support of the Arab Spring as well as to avoid a possible civilian slaughter like in Syria. Iraq and Afghanistan were both post 911 regime change wars. Obviously, South Korea was not about democracy since South Korea existed as a military dictatorship (and a US ally) for decades after the Korean War.

“…….Please define under what circumstances you believe majoritarian will of a citizenry should not dictate the form of government and its policies?…….”

The majority should dictate in a democracy, but that by no means is a guarantee that totalitarian rule will not prevail. That’s fairly obvious. One of the most important functions in a western democracy is protection of the minority written in law, enforced by the government and supported in the court system. In the US, the evolution of this concept has been ongoing since independence and is still evolving today. That is certainly one of the biggest problems in the greater Middle East (and the world) today.

If the minority rules, then by definition, the system must be authoritarian to maintain minority rule as was the case in Iraq before the US invaded, Bahrain, apartheid South Africa, Syria (Alawites) and so on. In Iraq, Shiite Muslims far outnumbered the Sunni population which controlled the government under Saddam Hussein. The Sunnis were obviously not happy to be thrown out of power – and the Shia population is rightly in power.

I think, and hope, both conservatives and liberals would have the same answers to the following questions:
Did North Korea start the Korean War? Yes. (Mr. Hasan says as much in his article.)
Should the US have assisted South Korea against the aggression of the North? Yes.
Should the US have bombed population centers after no more military targets remained, destroyed dams in an effort to induce nation-wide famine, and allowed the South to execute large numbers of suspected communists? No. These are war crimes.

Judging from the comments below, it is seems obvious to me at least that the wallstreet foreign policy thieves are preparing a blitzkrieg of propaganda to carpet bomb Americans with more WMD fantasies for VIETNAM II.

But the fact is that inside North Korea, according to leading Korea scholar Kathryn Weathersby, “it is still the 1950s … and the conflict with South Korea and the United States is still going on. People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened.”

Correct. And American Foreign Policy thieves for wallstreet with an ambition of conquering the world for implementation of the US Dollar, dont really give a damn because greedy thieves dont give a damn.

In the US, these monsters had a plan in 2000 to overthrow 7 middle east countries in 5 years. They are nothing short of zionist Hitler brained criminals.

I really would like to know if the claim that the US killed 20% of the population is accurate or not. Can we still rely on journalists to verify and fact-check such claims?

The quote of Air Force General Curtis LeMay seems to have been altered in the article so as to give the appearance of more certainty than the General expressed. Why would a journalist alter a quote in such way, this seems wrong?

some people are natural born pigs.
the ugly foreign policy thiefdom has 2 attitudes.
1. i want what you have
2. subordination, you will work for me
The combination of these 2 attitudes coupled with military strength and propaganda make America a very dangerous country.

The fact is, if we leave north korea alone, they will leave US alone.
Do they want to reclaim south korea? i do not know but i doubt it. I am sure they feel they were robbed but the passage of the decades have created a new reality.

I just want to know whether this claim of 20% is true or not. This seems like a big deal.

My quick online research suggests this claim is not well supported/accepted and also shows that Mr. Hasan changed the original quote in very suspicious way, which raise credibility concerns.

This is what General LeMay:
“Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population”
But this is how Mr. Hasan quoted him:
““we killed off … 20 percent of the population”
Mr. Hasan erased the “- what -“, which can only be explained as an attempt to give more credibility and certainty that the original quote clearly did not convey. Why would a journalist do that if not to mislead the readers? A good journalist would instead fact-check the claim and inform his readers of the results, which very opposite to what Mr. Hasam did here.

He did it to misled the readers. He quoted a high ranking US official giving his opinion. I am 100% certain if another high ranking US official would state that the US is only responsible for 1% of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Hasan would perform more research because he is against the US presence in Afghanistan. Gen LeMay could have been right or wrong, but his quote makes the US looks bad. That is all that matters for Hasan.

In fact, some reports put the figure at closer to 30%–the population of North Korea at the time of the war was 9 million, and most reports from that time indicate the civilian death toll was over 3 million people.

The Washington post is quoted “The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. ”

So, I see no problem with the quote. However, if you really want to know more, you can go to the source of the Washington Post, can’t you?

First you put the author’s integrity in question over his use of an ellipsis. When I disagree with you, you answer with unfriendly guesses about my motivation. That is not very helpfull to the discussion, is it?

You write: “I just want to know whether this claim of 20% is true or not.”

I reply that Hasan’s quotes lead you to the source, which makes it possible to check this number. (My guess is that the number is a rough estimate.)

To end on a positive note: I think it is commendable that you checked what is left out by an ellipsis. To end guessing what this means you can contact the author. Please let me know what his answer is.

Rough estimate based on what? This is a serious accusation. Competent journalists should do their homework. I cannot talk for Diogo, but I do question the author’s integrity. Hasan has a history of questioning US officials’ quotes, but he did not review Gen LeMay’s quote because that official said what Hasan wants us to believe.

(As far as I know Prof. Rummel (Hawaii U) came up with the highest North Korean civilian deaths. He admitted his numbers are educated guesses and NK civilians killed by NK forces are also included in his numbers. Even with his numbers you would not get 20%!)

“(My guess is that the number is a rough estimate.)” I mean: a rough estimate by Gen. Curtis LeMay. Hasan can legitemately quote The Washington Post as a source. If you are saying that it is better to also look at the source than I agree (I don’t know if Hasan did). If you are saying that he also should have looked at other sources and estimates, then I am not so sure, because it is a neverending task. Consider how many statements and citations an article contains. At some point one has to rely on a source, or the article will never be finished.

“… but I do question the author’s integrity”
What would Hasan’s point be, why would he deliberately misquote, is it a step on his way to total world domination, or what?

I think your being naïve or just not exercising critical thinking. I did check the sources and the numbers in this article are not supported even by the historians the article itself quotes. It is clear to me that this is intentional, just like the alteration of the quotes to erase the portion that would make it clear that the 20% claim is not an estimate at all, just guesswork and not credible (the author wanted to promote it as a fact).

Here are 2 historians critical of US:

Bruce Cummings: “Estimated North Korean casualties numbered 2 million, including about 1 million civilians and about 520,000 soldiers.”

Charles K. Armstrong: “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

The author turns less than 3 million total casualties (including soldiers and injuries) into more than 3 million civilian deaths. And turns 12-15% of NK population dead during the war (from all causes) into 20% killed by the US air bombings.

This is typical, a pattern with The Intercept and even before from Glenn Greenwald. Glenn writing about the Iraq War used to represent the total number of casualties in the war as killings by the US, assigning to the US the deaths perpretated by the other sides in the war! Its the same here, it is a a pattern in the strategy of anti-US propaganda (aka advocacy journalism) that uses and abuses of exagerations and falsehoods. It is intentional and not ethical. You can’t trust facts published by The Intercept.

“Its the same here, it is a a pattern in the strategy of anti-US propaganda (aka advocacy journalism) that uses and abuses of exagerations and falsehoods. It is intentional and not ethical. You can’t trust facts published by The Intercept.”

Now I see what you are trying to do. You put the integrity of The Intercept in question.

Consider that Greenwald received a ton of information from Snowden. Why would he make anything up? There is sufficient material already. The same goes for historical material: nobody has to make matters worse than they are already as described by bona fide historians or U.S. government sources. That would make no sense.

p.s. No, I am not against Americans. I think they deserve better government.

You have left out the Chinese component here. Please read: Enter the Dragon: China’s Undeclared War Against the U.S. in Korea, 1950-1951
When hundreds of thousands of Chinese poured across the border to enter the war it became a war of survival for the south and the American forces there. North Korean and then China were the aggressors in this war. So how about at least some acknowledgement that the American were fighting an aggressive force that wanted to dominate and kill many South Koreans and all the Americans who were there. China left whole divisions to freeze in the winter. Entire divisions were found frozen in their tracks by American forces. Brutality was on both sides.

When we all take a step back and look at all the military campaigns the US has been involved in over the past 65-70 years, after WWII, I see a privileged US population. Hasan described some of the US as blissfully ignorant to what actual goes on in foreign conflicts. Very true, and it does not matter the social or income class either. Some of our low income, middle, and upper classes all display a privilege and live in a disconnected bubble that rationalizes or dismisses exactly what it is the US military is engaging in overseas.

Andrew Bacevich in writing about a fellow historian said that the colleague complained that the American foreign relations establishment lacked empathy. By that he did not mean the surface meaning, but an inability and lack of accurately understanding the position of foreign leaders and nations and why they took those positions. This is not to say that one needs to sympathize or agree, but merely to clearly understand the other side. Hopefully somebody in State or the Pentagon will read this.

Reading the comments is jarring exercise….How is it that McArthur or LeMay’s madness can be justified by anyone. 30 to 50 nukes proposed by McArthur and the carpet bombing pioneered by LaMay and used against the Japanese and Koreans constitute -to put it plainly – crimes against humanity. And yet, many here seem to conveniently skip such details. So if the U.S., killed some 3 MILLION people it did os b/c it was right to so …We are insane to not even pause and ponder, aren’t we?

Just like when he was at the New Statesman, Hasan misses an important point. When the US justifies their actions (massacres, bombing raids, etc.) that kill millions of innocent people, what is this really saying? The only good (fill in the blank) is a dead one. In Iraq , how many times a day did David Petraeus and other top brass tell troops kill all of those haji (insulting Arabic term for “sand nigger”)?

Like it or not, if you want to improve relations with North Korea, start with looking at things from their point of view. Bill Richardson (former US Ambassador to the UN) now has an international political consulting firm in Santa Fe, NM. Who’s one of his clients? Google. He’s been to Pyongyang many times and continues to go there. Why is he successful? Because he knows when to keep his mouth shut. Yes it’s a Communist dictatorship. Yes they have prison camps. But it’s also a business opportunity. Trump knows that if US firms don’t establish a foothold there just like they have in China and Vietnam, other countries will rush in to fill that gap. Then, the US Chamber of Commerce will be screaming bloody murder. They lobbyists will attack Congress and Trump. Then, the Republicans will lose lots of campaign money for 2018 and 2020.

“……..For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south……..”

Just a minor detail, Mr. Hasan.

“……Nevertheless…….”

There is no “nevertheless” in this story. North Korea aided by the Chinese and Soviets was responsible for the war. North Korea today is a stark reminder of what South Koreans faced if they lost the war. Likely, millions of South Korean lives were saved by the US (UN) entry into the war. North Korea (today) also serves as a reminder of the brutal totalitarian system of government which claimed tens of millions of lives in the twentieth century. South Korea is a thriving democracy and an economic powerhouse while the North Korean people suffer within a Stalinist regime.

The Soviets provided military hardware support to the North Koreans including modern tanks while Russia pilots also fought in the war. The Chinese supplied manpower with estimates ranging from 114,000-400,000 deaths. Nothing is mentioned in this article how the Chinese and Soviets “saved” the North Korean regime from defeat – and what that cost North Koreans even today. Millions died as a result of “saving” the North Korean regime. A better question is why North Koreans shouldn’t hate the Chinese and Soviets. The Chinese primarily have supported and propped up a dictator responsible for the death of millions of people in South and North Korea for geopolitical reasons. Millions died in North Korea after the war due to economic policies, political repression and detention in gulags (“Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal”; scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=gsp):

“……..This article discusses North Korea as a case of state-induced famine, or faminogenesis. A famine from 1994 to 2000 killed 3–5% of North Korea’s population, and mass hunger reappeared in 2010– 2012, despite reforms meant to address the shortage of food. In addition, a prison population of about 200,000 people is systematically deprived of food; this might be considered penal starvation……”

The “why do they hate us” is a cute lead-in to the article, but misses the mark by a long ways.

So, that the Korean government forces ‘invaded’ Korea is the only, the complete, the absolute reason that a war started, got your point.
Because, after all, the designated good guys are always in the right, and the designated bad guys always in the wrong, otherwise you might have to think, and you’re as allergic to facts based thinking as Trump is.

“…….Because, after all, the designated good guys are always in the right, and the designated bad guys always in the wrong, otherwise you might have to think, and you’re as allergic to facts based thinking as Trump is…….”

Lucky for me, the facts speak for themselves in the case of North Korea.

North Korea was absolutely the aggressor in the Korean war and committed their fair share of atrocities and war crimes.

In any armed conflict you can find plenty of atrocities and war crimes on either side to build grudges off of. Plenty of terrible things went on during Vietnam, and they as a country absolutely do not hold the same level of hatred towards the US that North Korea does.

In this case, the hatred is used to distract and help keep power in the hands of Kim Jong Un et al. Sure there’s factual events we’ve done 70 years ago that are the basis for a propaganda engine. But… like… I”m not sure what exactly the point of this article is. Other than “you don’t know much about the Korean War”.

How does your post refute anything Craig posted, Richard? You bring no facts to the table, can’t dispute the facts that you object to and then accuse others of being “allergic to facts based thinking”. Sheesh talk about hypocrisy.

First you quote from the article “For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south……..”

and then you remind Mr. Hasan that this is not a minor detail.
However, Mr. Hasan never said it was a minor detail in the first place.

Not sure why the author is surprised and horrified by carpet bombing North Korea. The strategy was clear to the world. Germany and Japan suffered that fate and by the end of the Japanese campaign LeMay and his stat man Robert McNamara had it down to a science. Of course they remember the Korean War best. Post Korean War, the north stopped participating in anything else. Has the author investigated their primary education curriculum? I bet it’s a good read.

I’m sorry but The DPRK is much more complex than this article surmises. Try reading Laura and Lisa Ling’s account of being on the inside, “Somewhere Inside”. I generally “go to” The Intercept to seek out honest, comprehensive and unbiased reporting. Please tell the whole story next time.

While I certainly sometimes disagree with Mehdi Hasan, your (mis)characterization of his columns is just that. Hasan is an exceptionally fine journalist, especially re: his interviewing skills. Few are as well prepared and intelligent. And, again, I sometimes disagree with him, on occasions quite strongly.

lmao. someone invades a sovereign country and they are treated not like guests. Unlike the US FP ahoes who open borders and allow thieves from outside run the country over, establish a drug empire the same as the brits did to china, and steal american jobs.

This seems like a slanted essay with the writer having an axe to grind based on a false premise. The North Korean people in and of themselves don’t hate the U.S., their government – which has brought all this misery on that population for decades, does. – and reinforces it with the state controlled schooling and propaganda that the population is subjected to there. The holiday is there because the North’s government says so and it suits their tyrannical purpose.

Let any normal North Korean go to the South, and see where they’d choose to live – no contest….they’re still starving in the North (a 3rd world nation essentially) while their government spends money developing nuclear weapons under the control of a single family. The war, its consequences (that was how wars were fought back then) and the current plight of the North Korean population is all the making of the North Korean government, that family – its choices.

As the North Koreans with their soviet support (the soviets invaded at the end of WW2 to the 38th parallel), rolled south much of that part of the country was destroyed as well. After the invasion at Inchon and then the Chinese invasion after the U.N. forces approached the border with China most of the North was destroyed without LeMay’s B-29’s which were often used tactically. Had the North Korean leadership chosen not to invade the South, they wouldn’t have brought this destruction upon their citizens (whom their family leadership have demonstrated over the years they do not care about). The citizenry in the South are in a 1st world nation, can choose their leaders (not living under the hand of a “god”), a free press and have freedom themselves.

There are no polls of North Koreans, as far as I can tell, so you can’t make confident assertions either way. Asking defectors is not indicative of anything. It’s like comparing Cubans who live in Cuba to those who live in Miami — very different populations. The fact is that most people prefer to live in their own countries, almost regardless of socio-economic conditions. It’s also a fact that the US is a significant threat to small countries that don’t do its bidding.

True, but for the fact this has happened repeatedly to smaller weaker countries who do not agree with the US– Iran, 1952, and Iraq, 2003, are the first that come to mind, as well as most of SouthAmerica.

You’re missing the point of the article. He’s not saying North=good/right. It’s just about increasing understanding of people – which is something that is lacking in both the United States and N. Korea.
It’s a lot harder to go to war and kill real human beings that you know and understand than it is to kill crazy, unreasonable ‘others’. There’s little we can do at the moment to help the understanding that North Koreans have of us, but we can try to increase our own understanding of them.

I’d eat my hat if Trumps would have enough valour to attack NK.Trump is trying to regain the ” threatening stick ” which the US is losing- Trump is well-versed that the US can longer win wars.Thats fact Mehdi

Actually the united states did not start the war, the soviet union provided the north with money and supplies while they invaded the south. The south didn’t call for U.S. aid, they called for U.N. support and the U.N. asked for volunteers. The united states and at least a dozen other countries sent military personnel in. Yes, the united states had the most, but we did not decide what gets attacked or not. This article makes it sound like the united states invaded the north, when actually the north invaded the south. The united states was simply doing what the united nations asked.

Thanks for a reality check most Americans seriously need. Look no further than America’s dismal press and systemic propaganda to explain American ignorance. Much of the same was repeated in Vietnam. I wish you would of covered the Chinese and North Korean peace treaty offer that is continually rebuffed by the USA and largely unreported by our “free press”.

Nice one, Mehdi. Vital context, never referenced amid all the babble about NK’s efforts to defend itself. Had 20% of the US population been wiped out by some faroff power a few decades back, and every US town flattened, the episode would be imprinted under the eyelids of every American child born thereafter and anything and everything would be done to avoid a repetition. Look at the national trauma induced by the pinprick of 9/11 for an indication of how we’d react.

Well, apparently Mehdi’s rhythmic polemic can be put to good use as well as the other. Nice.

There is more to be said about this war and about its origins in foul foreign policy decisions by the Americans who ended up “occupying” the American zone rather than “liberating” it.

Beginning with the standard American tendency to rely on the fascist Japanese colonial officials for information about the Koreans they were about to be in charge of.

Asked who could be trusted among these second-class colonial subjects, the Japanese recommended the collaborators and traitors who’d made themselves wealthy and powerful at the head of businesses and in the repressive colonial police forces.

Asked who to watch out for, the Japanese wisely labeled anyone who had resisted the colonial boot as “communists”. Those were the people who eventually were massacred under the watchful eyes of the American overseers.

I once told a Korean friend that I had to stop reading Korean history because of all the tragic stories the Americans have left behind in their imperial swagger, the history of the Koreas since 1945 makes me most want to see a few million of the bastards roasted on their own petard. (Think about it)

Yes, that fact, that the dividing line that was supposedly crossed to ‘start’ the war was a fictional creation of the Imperial powers that the Korean government refused to accept as real.
One could quite easily say that the war started when the Korean government tried to exercise sovereignty over Korea, and the US backed separatists attacked it.

Yes, you have to have a balance bt the right and left sides– impossible to have one without the other. Even you have a leftside heart! Communist is ok, we are all communists when we share the roads! Extremes are the problem. The Russi txar ransacked his country with no sharing.

A dirty nasty war all the way around. Hopefully, we can avoid a much worse conflict with weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, nuclear, that could expand to WWIII. I hope China takes a hand to moderate the situation, They may be the only grownups in the room? Peace balanced on Kim’s and Trump’s shoulders is ripe for misfortune.

We have the traitorous Clintons to thank for gifting the Kims with over $5 billion in aid in 1994 that allowed the Democratic People’s Republic to fast track and extend its nuclear weapons and delivery platform reach to Hawaii, let alone Japan.

This is Osirak, June 1981 . Operation Opera. This is what happens when you have to clean up yet another liberal Democratic aggression against the world.

The article is about how North Koreans are very much justified in their distrust of the US, so it’s not surprising they are arming themselves as best they can. How do your ramblings address that point?

I have to admit that I had no idea that the Korean War had been that deadly.

One thing this war really reminds me of is that the United Nations is scarcely the symbolic or inoffensive little institution it is so often made out to be. Just a few years after they were formed supposedly to promote peace around the world, there they are supervising the killing of 20% of a country. The U.S. provided the muscle but they provided the *instigation*. Let’s recall that the Imperial Japanese, scarcely known as bleeding hearts, had nonetheless managed to set up a provisional government after their surrender (the People’s Republic of Korea) which had communist tendencies but nonetheless was not yet Kim Il Sung. It was the UN that put its imprimatur on the two zones, the separate rigged election for the South, and finally, the indignant protest that the “nation” it had created south of an arbitrary line cutting across islands and mountains was being invaded and this had to be stopped by … any means. It seems worth considering that just maybe a People’s Republic of Korea that was not subject to all this interference would have been, on average, no worse a place, and with so much less futile combat.

The UN keeps coming up with those bright ideas — leading, for example, to the official all-out famine in the South Sudan country it created. And of course they were there before the UN, like the Mandates of Syria, Iraq, Palestine…

I mean, the U.S. sucks at nation building but at least our politicians, unaided, don’t try to build nations that weren’t even there before, then stroll off whistling and pretending they had nothing to do with it when the new regimes blow up.

The UN also deserves credit for such brilliant ideas as the right of refugees to claim asylum wherever they can sneak into (but not anywhere they get turned away from before they arrive), and of course, the ever-successful international war on drugs. I mean, they never found a turd that they couldn’t polish and mount on permanent display for multiple future generations to rub their hands on.

True, for the past hate and hell the US brings FIRST, and also he continuing non-founded obsession with these countries– just leave them alone. If the US is really a superpower, then shutup and manup.but as for all the Russia-rahrah by the CrookdClinton Dems, it is about creating a false enemy and false need for the countrymen here. Hell they might find out what the french and germans discovered post ww2: THEY WERE REALLY ALL THE SAME AND COULD LIVE PEACEFULLY. Hell, caint let t.h.a.t. happen! That is a tool to influence an election!

Mr. Hasan, it’s refreshing to read a nuanced view of US-North Korean relations, though that’s to be expected (or hoped for) here at The Intercept, however, I don’t think you’ve gone far enough.

You’ve mentioned figures like Dean Rusk, but more importantly than what he said is what he did along with Charles Bonesteel in 1945. It was those two men in the service of the US government who unilaterally divided the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel. North and South Korea aren’t ancient entities. When we speak of North Korea invading the South in 1950, we’re speaking of a faction crossing over a US-imposed line that divided a people with a few thousand year history. Considering that the US supported an unpopular but powerful minority in the South from 1948 until the present, many of who were collaborators with the Japanese colonial government, it’s not hard to see why the North views the South as a puppet government of the US. Most people, including myself, would not want to see a North Korean type regime ruling the entire peninsula (or even half of the peninsula), but we should at least be aware of the history, as is your thesis in this article.

Finally, I’m surprised you haven’t referenced B.R. Myer’s book, The Cleanest Race, as this book is an essential work for understanding North Korea. Myer’s is a feared name in North Korean studies (feared, that is, by many of the North Korean scholars who lack Korean language skills), not least because he exposes plagiarism, like Armstrong’s Tyranny of the Weak, which you did choose quote.

If he was aware of it and honest then I don’t think he could have avoided discussing it in his article. As I said, if we talk about the North invading the South without talking about America’s unilateral role in creating a North and a South then we’re framing the discussion in a dishonest way.

Regarding Myers, yes, I am talking about his retraction, but that’s only part of it. The book that Armstrong generously borrowed from without acknowledging properly (Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era (2005)) was written by Balazs Szalontai. Szalontai provides a comprehensive table of Armstrong’s dubious scholarship. It can be found here:

As for your comment about Myers being a propagandist, in what sense do you mean? Myers certainly takes a harder stance against North Korea than Cumings, who is arguably the most popular North Korean scholar.

The Big ‘What If’ of the 1900s
What If Henry Wallace had been kept on as VP at the July 1944 Chicago Democratic Convention instead of being replaced by Harry Truman? At start of convention, 65% wanted Wallace, 2% Truman. Wallace was literally moments & feet away from highly likely winning the nomination as Senator Pepper was about to do, but just then, big biz Democratic Party bosses hacked it by calling for an adjournment, yet despite the Nays overwhelming the Ayes, the party bosses adjourned it anyways. The rest is history.

Maybe they’ll ask one day too, what if Dilma Rousseff were still in office instead of impeached, which was backed unofficially by United States U.S. State Dept. The now Brazilian Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes flew to D.C. just days after impeachment began and met with U.S. gov (April 18-20, 2016). What if Dilma were still in office & a Brazilian like Celso Amorim was leading peace negotiations at the United Nation in Syria & North Korea?

Maybe another big ‘What If’ of the twenty hundreds.
What if high school kids watched Oliver Stone’s Untold Story of the United States & read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States?

This is not to increase anti-U.S.Americanism, but rather to get a world back whole again. Truman split the globe largely into two. It’s beyond time we forge, for the first time, into one. Yet this will likely never happen if the U.S. continues to thwart diplomacy, which they need to do to continue endless warfare to boost profits for the military industrial complex. No wars, no profits. That. Simple.

The United States does many amazing things, like NASA pushing the human race deeper into space, but here on Planet Earth, it’s been dividing us since Atomic Truman.

I’ve already listened to this hour long interview. Where are the lies? Also, in regards to The Untold History of the United States, it was co-written with History Professor Peter Kuznick, and I’ve yet to see much criticism about this being flooded with lies. In fact, as bwog’s comment nicely points out, the info was more so ‘retold’ rather than ‘untold.’

However, I fully admit that many of their comments & arguments throughout the series are opinions and not facts, but those opinions I strongly identify with and have no problems putting my name behind that piece of work.

There are 12 episodes at about an hour each. That’s a total of 12 hours out of a total of 540 hours of history given in high school (3 years @ 180 days/year). Some obviously will consider this left-wing propaganda, so to be fair, give them 12 hours of right-wing…in fact, give them double the time!!

Those 12 hours will be like 12 rounds of boxing where they get knocked out round after round, and will likely have found some dark truths about The Empire.

The book by Stone and Kuznick “The untold history of the United States” is better than than the documentary series (there is even a student’s version of it.
A criticism from historians is that the contents are known and documented and therefore not untold. Point is, however, that although historians know all about the contents of this book, the general public does not. (Untold does not mean secret in this context.)

Yes, I agree on Zeitgeist! I’m a big fan of Peter Joseph’s works and found Jacque Fresco totally inspiring on the last one. There’s also a great Brazilian series worth watching on Netflix called “The Beginning of Life: The Series.”

If you can understand Spanish, I highly recommend Prohibited Education. I think it was on Netflix, but not anymore. We as a global society should seriously talk about education reform in all areas & holistically as well, not just history & science.

I 100% agree the issues with our society are rooted in what people like to call education. Education is leading people out of ignorance. Schools now a days are indoctrination centers for the most part, unless you have one of those rare teachers who is awake and knows how to sneak some wisdom into their lessons. It’s incumbent upon people to educate themselves and change themselves if we want to see a more sane society.

It’s nice to hear (or see in this case) other voices who share a similar vision :)

That’s what you get with waging wars around the world. Anti-americanism sentiment is real on many countries through south america, middle east and south asia. US is/was a powerful cultural influencer nation throughout the world, but imperialism will end up undermining united states power from its foundation.

It’s interesting to contrast this with how the South Koreans and Japanese, who also suffered from US bombing, as well as Vietnamese and Filipinos have largely discounted this part of their history, for better or worse. Different politics of memory.

We hear a lot about North Korea but nothing about the utter massacre the US inflicted on this country. It’s no wonder the North has become so defensive and fearful. It’s more understandable to me why they feel this way. In some of the many lectures given by scholar Andrew Bacevitch, what he has said and as he provides a laundry list of countries the US has invaded since WWII, the idea of being a proud American now makes me sick to my stomach. If I could, I’d leave this country.

Then you should do whatever you can to leave. Many of the wars fought years ago were fought in a way that nobody would condone. The US is just one example of a country and leaders behaving poorly. We have come a long way in the past 67 years. You’re ashamed of how we fight wars? Does the treatment of minorities bother you too? Because it should. We are also a country that has spent trillions of dollars helping those in need around the globe. Sacrificed thousands and thousands of young American lives trying to save people in countries we don’t know… For the good of humanity.

No “country” is perfect, nor has been. But the people who live here should find some reasons to love their country… It makes it a better place to live. And if you are embarrassed to call yourself an American, then you certainly don’t understand how far we have come as a nation and where we continue to go… Please… Find a way out.

Sacrificed thousands and thousands of young American lives trying to save people in countries we don’t know… For the good of humanity.

Can you share a list of these countries, places where we intervened militarily, only for the good of humanity? Because I think that’s just the advertising, as opposed to the actual product being bought. And it sucks to think that about the country in which you’ve lived your entire life.

So, I’m probably going to get flamed for saying this, but I agree w/Bob (at least, I think I do; my reading comprehension could be off).

Sure, if the US was a paladin a la AD&D, it probably would’ve lost its powers long ago. But situations like these — global situations, infused with prejudices, fears and attitudes of the times, are difficult to assign singular blame.

I’m not a Korean War expert, by any means. Nor am I trying to exonerate the US of any wrong doing. But there are factors which I haven’t seen mentioned. How “targetable” were the weapons at the time? Did the North Koreans ever offer a surrender, or were they willing to let their society burn? Why or why not? Did the US at least make a threat before carpet bombing?

Moreover, why does no one seem to acknowledge the role of the USSR in the conflict? Surely some of the blame lays at that nation’s feet. It’s said that the USSR ‘approved’ the war, but did they also, perhaps, persuade North Korea to attempt such an assault? If a tyrannical power was aiding a proxy faction in a war against another faction or nation, should America ignore the situation? (Not to suggest that America should utilize false pretenses for getting involved in a conflict. Unfortunately, we have, so that’s definitely one massive point against the US and a reason to be cynically suspicious about the reasons behind any future military action. My question is more along the lines of, if something situationally equivalent to Nazi Germany invading Poland were to occur tomorrow — should we appease, ignore or act? Should we only act when we are directly threatened?)

Also, should America be blamed for one crazy general’s atrocious plan? Even if said plan was not approved/utilized?

Another argument that I’ve seen is the idea about how the US would feel if Korea aided one of the sides of the US civil war… but isn’t this exactly what France did in helping the colonists during the war of independence? Is the argument that no country should come to the aid of another? (Disparagement is not my intent; I’m just asking the question.)

Finally, should the sins of the parent be visited upon the child? In North Korea, I have heard that the current cultural inclination is that the stains of guilt bleed across 3 generations. (And, trepidatiously, I also ask the same of the heroics.)

Again, I just want to reiterate that I feel like these are questions worth asking. I am asking in good faith and the intent is NOT to discredit or attack anyone. In fact, I’m not sure if I have an answer for them. In fact, as I grow older, answering them only seems to get more difficult.

Usa_naziland & north-korea are so alike its untrue. You both have overly vast numbers of serving & ‘recall’ military members. You both praise the flag & national anthem as something sacred & indomitable,…you literally stop what you are doing!! Those primary schooling days where you were conditioned into that lark really stuck in your minds, almost like mind-control. You also eventually love the leader whoever they are because not doing so is a commie/traitorous thing too do. You ultimately live within a bubble world sphere were the public or citizens of usa congratulate bombing of schools & wedding & hospitals & foreign journalists. As long as you are killing something the american dream is kept aloft of reality the rest of the world see’s. Always out to blow the fuck out of some newly invented (see CIA_scum/FBI_scum) terrorist threat or rebel group wanting ‘help’ to gain democracy. Go home soldiers of america & see what a failed state you partake in. Leave the north-korean people alone to hate on a nation who really is the biggest threat to world peace; usa_naziland!

Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.

Just add one more to that list: the South. Visit the south in the US and you’ll likely hear words describing the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”, then revisit the words of Sherman.

So really this is in keeping with a long tradition in the US; the president since he has become a tyrant has done these things and more. If the US does horrifying things against its own what makes the North Koreans so special?

Exactly! Right on. But slavery and native oppression were not limited to the south. Those two groups are largely still oppressed today. And today that is still the justification for war, that we have to save the oppressed (on foreign soil that is). Lincoln brilliantly coopted slavery: with or without slavery I will keep the Union together. Lincoln is not interested in the right of self ownership.

Remember what poor Saddam did to those (even tho he was an ally) up until the invasion — Greenwald has an article on this.

We are white knighting ourselves by coopting the freedom and democracy cause.